Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.

The Mysterious Letter

THE
YOUNG GAME-WARDEN

BY

HARRY CASTLEMON

AUTHOR OF "THE HOUSE-BOAT BOYS," "GUNBOAT SERIES,"
"ROCKY MOUNTAIN SERIES," ETC.

THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.
PHILADELPHIA
CHICAGO TORONTO

Copyright, 1896,
BY
HENRY T. COATES & CO.

CONTENTS.

THE

YOUNG GAME-WARDEN.

CHAPTER I. SILAS MORGAN.

"I do think in my soul that of all the mean things a white man has to do, hauling wood on a hot day like this is the very meanest."

The speaker was Silas Morgan—a tall, broad-shouldered man, whose tattered garments and snail-like movements proclaimed him to be the very personification of indolence and shiftlessness.

As he spoke, he took off his hat and drew his shirt-sleeve across his dripping forehead, while the lazy old horse, which had pulled the rickety wood-rack up the long, steep hill from the beach, lowered his head, dropped his ears, and fell fast asleep.

The man had two alert and wide-awake companions, and they were a brace of finely-bred Gordon setters, which, after beating the bushes on both sides of the road in the vain effort to put up a grouse or start a hare, now came in, and lay down near the wagon.

They were a sight for a sportsman's eye, and that same sportsman would very naturally ask himself how it came that this poverty-stricken fellow could afford to own dogs that would have won honors at any bench-show in the land.

"Yes, I reckon them dog-brutes air just about nice," Silas said, whenever any inquisitive person propounded this inquiry to him, "and they were given to me for a present by a couple of city shooters who once hired me for a guide. You see, birds of all sorts, and 'specially woodcock, was mighty skeerce that year, but I took 'em where there was a little bunch that I was a saving for my own shooting, and they had the biggest kind of sport. They give me them dogs in consequence of my perliteness to 'em."

There was no one in the neighborhood who could dispute this story, but there were those who took note of the fact that at certain times the dogs disappeared as completely as though they had never existed, and that they were never seen when there were any strange sportsmen in the vicinity.

"The luck that comes to different folks in this world is just a trifle the beatenest thing that I ever heared tell on," continued Silas, leaning heavily upon the wood-rack and fanning his flushed face with his brimless straw hat. "I can think and plan, but it don't bring in no money, like it does for some folks that ain't got nigh as much sense as I have. Now, there's them two setter dogs that was accidentally left on my hands last year! I thought sure that I'd make my everlasting fortune out of them; but if there's been a reward offered for their safe return to their master, I never seen or heared of it. I've tried every way I can think of to make something, so't things in and around my house won't look so sorter peaked and poor, but I'm as fur from hitting the mark now as I was ten year ago. I wish I could think up some way to make a strike, but I can't; and so here goes for that wood-pile. It won't always be as hot as it is to-day. Winter will be here before long, the roads will be blocked with drifts, and if this wood ain't down to the beach directly, me and the ole woman will have to shiver over a bare hearth."

With this reflection to put life and energy into him, Silas straightened up and turned toward the wood-pile with slow and reluctant steps, all unconscious of the fact that every move he made was closely watched by two recumbent figures, who, snugly concealed by a thicket of evergreens, a short distance away, had distinctly caught every word of his soliloquy.

The dogs knew they were there, for they had run upon their hiding-place, but as the recumbent figures were neither birds nor hares, they did not even bark at them, but gave a friendly wag with their tails, as if to say that it was all right, and returned to their master, to whom they gave no sign to indicate that they had discovered anything.

Silas went about his work in that indescribably lazy way that a boy or man generally assumes when he is laboring under protest. Every stick he lifted from the pile to the wagon seemed to tax his strength to the very utmost, and he was often obliged to stop and rest; but still he made a little headway, and when the rack was about half-loaded he concluded that he could do no more until he had refreshed himself with a smoke.

"I have always heared," said Silas, aloud (whenever he thought himself safely out of hearing, he invariably gave utterance to the thoughts that were in his mind)—"I have always heared 'em say that all this country around here is historical, and that if these mountings could speak, they'd tell tales that would make your eyes stick out as big as your fist.

"They do say that there's been a heap of stealing and plundering going on about here in the days gone by"—as Silas said this he glanced around him a little apprehensively—"and that there's heaps and stacks of gold and silver hid away where nobody won't ever think of looking for 'em. If I thought that was so, wouldn't I try my level best to find some of it? I'd leave Joe and Dan to run the ferry, and then I'd put a shovel on to my shoulder and come up here, and never leave off digging till I'd turned some of these mountings t'other side up. But I guess I won't smoke. I was fool enough to come away and leave my matches to home."

Silas held his pipe in his hand, and ran his eye along the wood-pile as if he were looking for a light.

As he did so, he gave a sudden start, his eyes opened to their widest extent, his under jaw dropped down, and the hand in which he held the pipe fell to his side.

The object that riveted his gaze was a letter. It had been thrust into a crack in the end of a stick of wood, and looked as though it might have been placed there on purpose to attract his attention.

"Now, don't that beat you?" exclaimed Silas, who was greatly astonished. "Who in the world has been using my wood-pile for a post-office, I'd like to know?"

If the truth must be told, Silas was frightened as well as surprised. Like all ignorant men, he was superstitious, and whenever he saw or heard anything for which he could not account on the instant, he was sure to be overcome with terror.

His first thought was to take to his heels, make the best of his way to the cabin, and send his boys back after the wagon; but if he did that, they would be sure to see the letter—they couldn't help it, if they kept their eyes open—and might they not read it and make themselves masters of some information that he alone ought to possess?

"It's mighty comical how that thing come there, and who writ it," said Silas, "and somehow I can't get my consent to tech it."

And he didn't touch it, either, until he had viewed it from all sides. First, he bent down, with his hands upon his knees, and twisted his body into all sorts of shapes in the vain effort to see the other side of the letter. Then he straightened up and made a wide circle around it; and finally, he climbed upon the wood-pile and looked at it from another direction. At last, he must have satisfied himself that it was a letter and nothing else, for he reached out his hand and took possession of it.

"It's mighty comical," repeated Silas, looking first at the letter, and then turning suspicious glances upon the surrounding woods, "and I can't for the life of me think who put it there. Now, who'll I get to read it for me? I can spell out printing with the best of them, but I can't say that I know much about them turkey-tracks they call writing."

As Silas was walking around the wood-pile toward his wagon, he turned the letter over in his hands, and then he saw that there was something inscribed upon the envelope. The characters were printed, too, and the man had little difficulty in deciphering the following:

"Notis

"to the luckey person in to whose hans this dockyment may happen to fall. thare is a big fortune for you in this mounting if you have got the pluck to do what I have writ on the inside. thare is danger in it, but mebbe that hant won't bother you as it has bothered me ever since I pushed him in to the gorge."

Silas was in another profuse perspiration long before he spelled out the last word in the "notis," but now the cold chills began creeping all over him. His breath came in short, quick gasps, and his hand trembled visibly, as he thrust the letter into his pocket. Then he cast frightened glances on all sides of him, glided back to his wagon with long noiseless footsteps and reached for the reins.

The commands which he usually shouted at his aged and infirm beast, were uttered in a whisper, and the horse, not being accustomed to that style of driving, had to be severely admonished with a hickory switch before he would settle into the collar and start the very light load behind him.

Silas never could have told how he got down the hill without breaking his crazy old wagon all to pieces, for his mind was so completely taken up with other matters that he never thought to look out for the rough places in the road, or to give a wide berth to the stumps. He seemed to be treading on air. He hoped and believed that he was on the point of making a most important discovery; but, great as was his desire to make himself the possessor of the fortune that was hidden somewhere in the mountain he had just left, he could not screw up courage enough to stop and read the letter. He wanted to put the woods far behind him before he did that. The "notis" he had read contained some words that he did not like to recall to mind.

"Didn't I say that there had been a heap of plundering and stealing a going on in this country in bygone days?" said Silas to himself. "This letter proves it, and the words that's printed onto the envelope tells me some things that I don't like to hear tell of. There's likewise been some killing a going on up there. A feller has been shoved into one of the gorges, and his hant (some folks calls it a ghost or spirit) has come back, and keeps a bothering of the feller that pushed him in. I don't know whether or not I can get my consent to go up there and dig for that fortune, even if I knew where to look for it, which I don't."

At the end of half an hour, Silas Morgan drew a long breath of relief, and stopped looking behind him.

He was safely out of the woods, and moving quietly along the river road, within shouting distance of his cabin.

Then his courage all came back to him, and he was ready for any undertaking, no matter how dangerous it might be, so long as there was money behind it.

"Now, Silas, let's look at this thing kind o' sensible like," said he to himself. "There must be as much as a thousand dollars up there in the mounting. If there wasn't, it wouldn't be a fortune, would it? And what's to hender you from getting it for you own? If you go up there in the daytime, that hant can't bother you none, 'cause I've heard folks say that they never show themselves except on dark and stormy nights; but if this one comes out and tells you to leave off digging for that fortune, you can fill him so full of bird shot that he won't be of no use as a hant any more, can't you? Get along with you!" he shouted, bringing the heavy switch down upon the horse's back with no gentle hand. "I ain't got much more wood hauling for you to do, 'cause I'm going after them thousand dollars."

A few minutes later Silas reached his home. Dropping the reins and whip to the ground, he bolted into the cabin, closing the door behind him.

CHAPTER II. THE BROTHERS.

"Toot! toot! t-o-ot!"

This was the third time the horn had been blown—first warningly, then persuasively, and at last angrily.

The hunters on the other side of the river, who had been trying for more than twenty minutes to bring the ferryman over to them, were beginning to get impatient. So was Joe Morgan, the ferryman's youngest son—a sturdy, sun-browned boy of fifteen, who stood in the flat, holding one of the heavy sweeps in his hand, all ready to shove off.

He looked toward the men on the opposite shore, and then he looked at his brother, who sat on the bank, with his elbows on his knees and his chin resting on his hands.

"There's eighty cents in that load," said Joe, who was in a great hurry to respond to the angry blasts of the horn. "If they get tired of waiting, and go down to the bridge, we shall be just that much out of pocket."

"Let 'em go, if they want to," replied the boy on the bank, in a lazy, indifferent tone. "There's no law to hinder 'em that I know of. Pap don't seem to be in no great hurry, and neither be I. I'm sick and tired of pulling that heavy flat over the river every time anybody takes a fool notion into his head to toot that horn. Some day I'll get mad and sink it so deep that it can't never be found again—I will so!"

"Now, Dan, what's the use of talking that way?" exclaimed Joe, impatiently. "You know well enough that as long as we run the ferry, we must hold ourselves in readiness to serve any one who may call upon us; and if you should destroy the flat, we would have to get another or give up the business."

"And that's just what I want to do," answered Dan.

"Then how would we make a living?"

"Easy enough. Can't we all shoot birds and rabbits when the season's open, and snare 'em when it's shut? And can't mother earn a dollar every day by washing for them rich—"

"Dan, I'm ashamed of you," interrupted Joe. "What mother wants is rest, and not more work. Come on; what's the use of being so lazy? You've got to make a start some time or other."

But Dan made no move, and Joe, who was very much disgusted with his brother's obstinacy, threw down the sweep, sprang ashore and ran up the bank toward the little board cabin that stood at the top.

Finding that the door would not open for him, Joe ran around the corner of the building, and looked in at a convenient window, just in time to catch his father in the act of thrusting a letter into his pocket. The ferryman's face was flushed, and his movements were nervous and hurried. The boy saw at a glance that he was greatly excited about something.

"As long as I have been acquainted with him, I never knew him to get a letter before," said Joe to himself. "He has heard some very good or some very bad news, for he is so upset that he doesn't seem to know what he is about."

"I heard 'em blowing, Joey," said Silas, without waiting for the boy to speak, "and now we'll go and bring 'em over. Thank goodness, I won't have to follow this mean business much longer. I don't like it, Joey. I wasn't born to wait on other folks, and I'm going to quit it."

"Then you will have to quit ferrying," said Joe, as he followed his father down the bank.

"That's just what I intend to do," answered Silas, and then the boy noticed that there was a triumphant smile on his face, and that he rubbed his hands together as if he were thinking about something that afforded him the greatest satisfaction. "I've got an idee into my head, and if I don't make the folks around here look wild some of these days, I'm a goat," added the ferryman.

And then he raised a yell to let the men on the other side of the river know that he had at last made up his mind to respond to their signals. But before he did so, he shaded his eyes with his hand, and took a good look at the group on the opposite bank, after which he walked around the cabin, snapping his fingers as he went. This was a signal to the dogs that it was time for them to retire from public gaze for a short season; in other words, to go into a miserable lean-to behind the cabin, which Silas called a wood-shed, and stay there until the hunters, who were now on the other side of the river, should have passed out of sight. They went in in obedience to a sign from the ferryman, and the latter closed the door and put a stick of cord-wood against it to hold it in place.

"If them setter brutes was a present to pap, like he says they was, it's mighty comical to me why he takes so much trouble to hide 'em every time some of them city shooters comes along and toot that horn," soliloquized Dan, as he slowly, almost painfully, arose from the ground, and, after much stretching and yawning, followed his father and brother down the bank toward the flat. "He says he's scared that somebody will take a notion to 'em and steal 'em; but that's all in my one eye, 'cording to my way of thinking. Now, I'll just tell him this for a fact. If he don't quit being so stingy with the money I help him earn with this ferry, I'll bust up the plans he's got into his head about them dogs—I will so. I wonder what's come over him all of a sudden? Here he's been clear up the mounting and come back with only an armful of wood on his wagon, and he don't generally whoop in that there good-natured way, less'n he's got something on his mind."

That was true enough. The ferryman's replies to the hails that came to him from over the river, usually sounded more like the complaints of a surly bear than anything else to which we can compare them. The tone in which they were uttered seemed to say, "I'll come because I can't help myself," and he was so long about it, and made himself so very disagreeable in the presence of his passengers, that those who knew him would often go ten miles out of their way to reach a bridge rather than put a dime into his pocket. But on this particular morning, his voice rang out so cheerily that it attracted Joe's attention as well as Dan's.

Silas was always good-natured when he had something besides his poverty to think about, and Joe would have known that his father had some new idea in his head, even if he had not said a word about it.

"Lively, Dannie!" exclaimed Silas, seizing the steering-oar and pushing the flat away from the bank. "Put in your very best licks, 'cause there won't none of us have to follow this miserable business much longer. There'll be a day when we won't have to go and come at everybody's beck and call, and that day ain't so very far away neither."

The two boys took their places at the sweeps, and the flat moved out into the river. Joe did his best to make a quick passage, as he always did, while the lazy Dan, who had the current in his favor, merely put his oar into the water and took it out again, without exerting himself in the least. His father's hopeful and encouraging words did not infuse a particle of energy into him. He had heard him talk that way too often.

"It ain't right that we should be so poor, while other folks, who never did a hand's turn in their lives, have got more than they know what to do with," continued Silas, as he dropped the steering-oar into the water. "I've got just as much right to have money, and the fine things that money'll buy, as anybody has, and I'm going to have 'em, too. I ain't going to live like the pigs in the gutter no longer. Just think of the hundreds and thousands of dollars that's spent down to the Beach every summer by the city chaps who come there to loaf! I can't lay around under the shade of the trees or swing in a hammock just 'cause the weather's hot. I've got to work. I've got to cut cord-wood in winter and run this ferry during the summer, in order to make a living; but other fellows can stay around and do nothing, just 'cause they've got money. I say again, that such things ain't right."

"It makes me savage every time I go down to the Beach," chimed in Dan, "when I see them city folks, who ain't a cent's worth better than I be, wearing their good clothes, and walking around with their fine guns and fish-poles on their shoulders—"

"Like them over there," said his father, nodding his head toward the bank, which was now but a short distance away.

Dan faced about on his seat, and took a good look at the party in question.

There were ninety cents in the load instead of eighty. There were three sportsmen in brown hunting-suits, who were walking restlessly about as if they did not know what to do with themselves, and they had a double team, with a negro to drive it.

With them were half a dozen setters and pointers, which were exercising their muscles by racing up and down the bank.

The sight of the negro set the ferryman's tongue in motion again, while the good clothes the strangers wore had about the same effect upon Dan that a piece of red cloth is supposed to have upon a pugnacious turkey gobbler.

"More 'ristocrats!" sneered Silas. "Why don't they drive their own team?"

"Probably they don't want to," replied Joe. "Besides, they are able to hire some one to drive it for them."

"Of course they are!" exclaimed Silas, who was angry in an instant. "But I ain't able to hire a nigger to run this ferry for me. I say that such a state of things ain't right."

"Well, it isn't their fault, is it?" said Joe.

"I didn't say it was," snapped his father. "It ain't my fault, neither, that I haven't got as much money as the richest of them, but it will be my fault if I don't have it before the season's over. They're going after woodcock," added Silas, who was a market-shooter as well as a ferryman and wood-cutter. "I would like to bet them something that they won't get enough birds to pay them for crossing the river. I've got all the covers pretty well cleaned out."

"Them's the sort of fellers I despise," said Dan, turning around on his seat and resuming his work at the sweep—or, rather, his pretence of it. "The money them dogs cost would keep me in the best kind of grub and clothes for a whole year. Just look at the clothes they've got on, and then cast your eye at these I've got on. Dog-gone such luck! I hope they won't get nothing, and if they should hire me for a guide, I would take good care to lead them where such a bird as a woodcock wasn't never seen."

"Perhaps they don't need a guide," said Joe. "Because they wear good clothes and own fine dogs, it is no sign that they don't know woodcock ground or a snipe bog when they see it, as well as you do. Perhaps they are all better hunters and wing-shots than you ever dare be."

"Not much they ain't," exclaimed Dan, who got fighting mad whenever his brother threw out a hint of this kind. "I can beat any feller who wears them kind of clothes; and as for them fine dogs of their'n, I'll take Bony and get more partridges in a day than they can shoot in a week."

"Well, then, why ain't you satisfied? What are you growling about?"

"'Cause they're 'ristocrats—that's what I'm growling about," answered Dan, looking savagely across the flat at his brother, while Silas nodded a silent but hearty approval. "I am getting tired of seeing so much style every day, while I am so poor that I can't hardly raise money enough to buy powder and shot, and some fine day I'll bust up some of these hunting parties. I've got just as much right to see fun as they have."

"So you have, Dannie," said his father. "There ain't no sense in the way things go in this world anyway, and I am glad to see you kick agin it. I have always told you, that I would be better off some day, and I have hit upon the very idee at last. Me and you will stick together, and I'll warrant that we will make more money than Joe does by toadying to these 'ristocrats who come here to take the bread out of our mouths, by shooting the game that rightfully belongs to us."

"I don't toady to anybody," replied Joe, with some spirit. "I am glad of the chances they give me to earn something now and then, and I am sure we need it bad enough."

"I have thought up a way to get more out of them than you do, and the first good chance I get I am going to try it on," observed Dan. "I won't go halvers with you, neither, and you needn't expect me to. You never give me a cent."

"Of course I don't. You are as able to make something for yourself as I am to make it for you. Mother gets all I earn."

By this time the flat was within a few lengths of the shore, and the crew were obliged to give their entire attention to the sweeps, in order to make a landing. The ferryman, who up to this time had been in a state of nervousness and expectancy, now began to act more like himself—that is to say, he greeted his passengers with an angry scowl, and gave them about as much polite attention as he would have bestowed upon so many bags of corn.

He had kept his gaze fastened upon them, and he was both relieved and disappointed to discover that the owner of the dogs that were shut up in his woodshed was not among them.

At the proper moment the "apron"—a movable gangway which could be raised and lowered at pleasure—was dropped upon the bank, and in five minutes more the team and the passengers were all aboard, and the flat was moving back across the river.

CHAPTER III. THE MYSTERIOUS LETTER.

Having landed his passengers and pocketed his money, Silas Morgan made his way toward the cabin with so much haste that he again drew the attention of the boys, who gazed after him with no little surprise and curiosity. Silas was as lazy as a man ever gets to be, and Joe and Dan could not imagine what had happened to put so much life into him.

"I knew that something or 'nother had come over pap when he yelled in that good-natured way to let them fellers on t'other side know that he was coming," observed Dan, who walked back to his seat on the bank, and sunned himself there like a turtle on his log, while Joe hauled in the sweeps and made the flat secure. "He's got another of them money-making plans into his head, I reckon."

Those who were well acquainted with Silas Morgan knew that he always had plans of that kind in his head. He was full of schemes for getting rich without work, some of which, if carried into execution, would have brought him into serious trouble with the officers of the law; but the idea that occupied his busy brain on this particular morning was a little ahead of anything he had ever before thought of. You will probably laugh at it when you know what it was, but Silas didn't.

Of all the thousand and one plans which he had conjured up and pondered over, this one, which had come into his possession by the merest accident, seemed to hold out the brightest promises of success.

"But it wasn't accident, neither," Silas kept saying to himself. "There isn't a day during the shooting season that them mountings ain't just covered with hunters, and how did the man that put this letter into my wood-pile know that I was the one who was to take it out? He didn't know it. I found it 'cause it was to be so, that's the reason."

The first thing the ferryman did when he reached the cabin was to close and fasten the door, to prevent interruption, and the next to draw from his pocket the mysterious letter, which he spread upon the table before him.

To make himself master of its contents was a work of no little difficulty. Silas did not know much about books, and, besides, some of the characters that were intended to represent letters were so badly printed that it was hard to tell what they were intended for. He read as follows:

"December 15—In the Mountings.

"I write this to inform whoever finds it that I have a secret to tell you. I was born in Europe, and am now forty years of age. I am a gentleman, and my father is a rich man and a large land-owner. I am the second son, and fell in love with a girl when I was twenty years of age.

"Everything went well till my older brother came home from the war, and when she found out that I was not entitled to the estates, she left me, and went to concerts and balls with my brother, and that was something I could not stand. So I sent her a bottle of sody-water, with my best wishes, and I put in strickning, and the next day she was dead. The doctors said she died of heart disease, but I knew better. So I told my father that I was going to America. So he gave me five hundred pounds in money—"

"Five hundred pounds of money!" exclaimed Silas, after he had spelled the words over three times to satisfy himself that he had made no mistake. "How did he ever make out to carry that heft of greenbacks clear across the ocean and up into these mountings? If I find it, I'll have to bring it down on my wagon, won't I? And where'll I put it after I get it so that it will be safe? That's what's a bothering of me now."

Silas was already beginning to feel the responsibilities that weigh upon capitalists, one of whom assures us that he finds it harder work to take care of his money than it was to accumulate it. Silas made a note of all the good hiding-places which he could recall to mind on the spur of the moment, and then went on with his reading:

—"and the next day I shipped for New York. I wish I had never done it. A coming over the ocean, I made the acquaintance of a man who coaxed me to go to Californy with him, and there we fell in with two more who were as bad as we was, and we went into a bank there, and took out seventy thousand dollars. So we went to Canady, and stayed there till the country got too hot for us, and then we come to these mountings. So we went along till we come to the old Indian road. One day my chum dropped his pipe down a crack in the rocks, and he said he would have it again if he broke his neck a getting it. So he slid down about twelve feet, and there was as nice a cave in the rock as you ever see.

"There is a crack in the ground that goes down about twelve feet, and then you come onto the level, and can go a hundred feet before you come to the place where a lot of sand and stones has fell in. The cave has been lived in before, by robbers most likely, 'cause we found a lot of money and some guns and pistols there, of a kind that we never see before. I and my chum lived in this cave about three weeks, and then we started to go to the lake.

"When we got to the top of the Indian road, I refused to go any farther, and when my chum made as if he were going to shoot me for being a coward, I give him a shove, and down he went into the gulf. He's there now, where nobody will ever find him; but his hant (ghost) comes back to me every day and night, and that's why I am going to jump into the lake—just to get away from that hant. Now I must tell you about the money.

"There is twelve thousand in bills, and about three hundred in gold and silver. It is in a leather satchel in the bottom. It has a false plate on the bottom, put on with screws. And there you will find the money. I will and bequeath it to you and your heirs and assanees forever. I leave this in a wood-pile, and the one who draws the wood will find it.

"The cave is about a quarter of a mile from the wood-pile, near a large hemlock tree. There is a rope that goes down into the cave, and it hangs under the roots of the tree. Look close or you can't find it. I leave a map of the route from the pile of wood to the cave in this letter. I hope the hant won't bother you while you are getting the money, as he has bothered me ever since I have been writing this letter.

"Julius Jones."

Words would fail us, were we to attempt to tell just how Silas felt after he had finished reading this interesting communication. He hoped it might be true—that there was a cave with a fortune in it which he could have for the finding of it—and consequently it was very easy for him to believe that it was true; but there were one or two things that ought to have attracted his attention and aroused his suspicions at once.

In the first place, there was the document itself. It was now the latter part of August, and if the letter was left in the wood-pile on the day it purported to be written, it had been exposed for eight long months to some of the most furious snow and rain storms that had ever visited that section of the country, and yet the writing looked fresh, and there was not a single wrinkle or even the suspicion of a stain upon the envelope. It could not have been cleaner if it had but just been taken out of the post office.

Another thing, the writer would have found it an exceedingly difficult task to drown himself in the lake during the month of December, for he would have been obliged to cut through nearly two feet of ice in order to reach water.

But the ferryman did not notice these little discrepancies. He gave his imagination full swing, and worked himself into such a state of excitement that his nerves were all unstrung; consequently, when hasty steps sounded outside the cabin, and Dan's heavy hand fumbled with the latch, it was all Silas could do to repress the cry of alarm that trembled on his lips as he sprang to his feet.

Finding that the door was fastened on the inside, Dan came around the corner, and looked in at the window.

"Say, pap," he whispered excitedly, "dog-gone my buttons, what did you go and lock yourself up for? Think somebody was about to steal all the gold dishes? Open up, quick! Here's a go—two of 'em."

Although the ferryman heartily wished Dan a thousand miles away, he complied with this peremptory demand for admission, whereupon the boy stepped quickly across the threshold and locked the door behind him.

"Say, pap," he continued, in a hurried whisper, "don't it beat the world how some folks can make money without ever trying? Now, there's that Joe of our'n. He don't never seem to do much of nothing but just loaf around in the woods with them city fellers that come up here to show their fine guns, and yet he's always got money. He takes mighty good care to keep it hid, too, 'cause I can't never find none of it."

"Is that all you've got to say?" exclaimed Silas impatiently. "I know it as well as you do."

"Well, it ain't all I've got to say, neither," replied Dan. "I've got a heap more, if you will only let me tell you. Old man Warren is out there talking with Joe now. You remember them blue-headed birds you killed for him last year, don't you?"

"Them English partridges?" said Silas with a grin. "I ain't forgot 'em. Old man Warren offered me ten dollars a month if I wouldn't shoot over his grounds, 'cause he wanted them birds pertected till there were lots of 'em; but I wouldn't agree to nothing of the kind. He brung them birds from England on purpose to stock his covers with. They cost him six dollars a pair, and I made more'n forty dollars out of 'em. Well, what of it? I don't care for such trifling things any more."

"Well," answered Dan, "he's gone and got more of them to take the place of them you shot—old man Warren has—a hundred pair of 'em—six hundred dollars worth, and—"

"Ah! that makes it different," said Silas, rubbing his hands and looking up at his old muzzle-loader, which rested on a couple of wooden hooks over the door. "It's true that six hundred dollars ain't no great shakes of money to a man who—hum! But still I am obliged to old Warren. They won't bring me in no such sum as that, them birds won't, but they'll be worth a dollar a brace this season easy enough, and that'll pay me for the trouble I'll have in shooting them. Ain't I going to make a power of money this winter?"

"No, you ain't," snapped Dan, who had made several ineffectual attempts to induce his father to stop talking and listen to him. "And you ain't by no means as smart as you think you be, neither."

"What for?" demanded his father.

"'Cause you keep jawing all the while and won't let me tell you. He's going to have them birds pertected, the old man is, and you can't shoot them loose and reckless like you did last winter."

"That for his pertection!" cried the ferryman, snapping his fingers in the air. "He can't do it, and I won't pay no heed to him if he tries it."

"Then he'll have the law on you."

"He can't do that, neither, 'cause there ain't no close season for English partridges. There's no such birds in this country known to the law. Besides, how is old man Warren going to tell whether it was me or some of them city sportsmen that shot 'em?"

"He's going to post his land, and put a game-warden up there in the woods to watch them partridges," observed Dan.

"What kind of a feller is that?" asked Silas. "Is it the same as a game-constable?"

"Just the same, only the old man will pay him out of his own pocket, instead of looking to the county to pay him. He's going to have that there game-warden shoot every dog and 'rest every man who comes on to the grounds with a gun in his hands, if he don't go off when he's told to."

"Well, I'd like to see him shoot one of my dogs, and I wouldn't go off, neither, less'n I felt like it," said Silas, doubling his huge fists and looking very savage indeed. "Do you know how much he is going to give him?"

"Fifteen dollars a month from the first of September to the first of May," answered Dan, "and his grub is throwed in—the best kind of grub, too."

"Well, that ain't so bad," said Silas, slowly. "Fifteen dollars a month and grub for eight months—that would be a hundred and twenty dollars, wouldn't it, Dannie? That's more'n I could make by shooting the birds. Is old man Warren out there now? If he is, I'll go and tell him that I'll take the job. You and Joe can run the ferry during the rest of the summer, and pocket all you can make. I don't care for such trifling things any more."

"Whoop! Hold me on the ground, somebody!" yelled Dan, jumping up and knocking his heels together.

This was the expression he always used and the performance he went through whenever he got mad and became possessed with an insane desire to smash things.

"Now I'll just tell you what's a fact, pap," continued Dan, spreading out his feet, and settling his hat firmly on his head. "Me and Joe won't run the ferry, and neither will you get the chance to grow fat off good grub this winter, less'n you earn it yourself. Didn't I tell you the very first word I said that old man Warren had give the job to Joe?"

"Not our Joe!" exclaimed Silas, who was fairly staggered by this unexpected piece of news.

"Yes, our Joe—nobody else."

"No, you didn't tell me that," replied his father.

"Then it's 'cause you want to do all the talking yourself, and won't let me say a word," retorted Dan. "Yes, that Joe of our'n has got the job. He's going to have a nice house, with a carpet onto the floor, to live in, and the grub he'll have to eat will be just the same kind that old man Warren has onto his table at home. Just think of that, pap! You'll have to look around for some cheap boy to help you run the ferry from now till winter, 'cause I'm going up there to live with Joe, and help him keep an eye on them birds."

"Dan!" shouted Mr. Morgan, pushing up his sleeves, and looking about the room as if he wanted to find some missile to throw at the boy's head—"Dan, for two cents I'd—"

The ferryman suddenly paused, for he found he was talking to the empty air.

When he began pushing up his sleeves, Dan jumped for the door, and now all that Silas could see of him was one of his eyes, which looked at him through a crack about half an inch wide.

He noticed, however, that Dan held the hook in his hand, and that he was all ready to fasten the door on the outside in case his father showed a disposition to follow him.

CHAPTER IV. HOBSON'S HOUSE.

"And that ain't all I've got to tell you, neither," shouted Dan. "The road commissioners has come up here with some surveyors and a jury, and they're going to build a bridge across the river so's to bust up the ferrying business."

Silas would have been glad to thrash the boy for bringing him so unwelcome news as this, and the only reason he did not attempt it was because he knew he could not catch him.

He did not like the "ferrying business," for it was very confining, and, besides, there wasn't money enough in it to suit him; but still it enabled him to eke out his slender income, and the mere hint that the authorities were about to take away this source of revenue by building a bridge across the river at that point surprised and enraged him.

"That's just the way the thing stands, pap," continued Dan, who looked upon his sire's exhibition of bewilderment and anger as a highly edifying spectacle. "If you think I am trying to make a fool of you, look out the winder."

Silas looked, and a single glance was enough to satisfy him that there was something unusual going on outside the cabin.

There were at least a score of men gathered about the flat, and among them Silas saw the town commissioner of highways. He could easily pick out the surveyor and his party, for the former held a tripod in his hand, and a queer-looking brass instrument under his arm, while one of his men carried a chain and the rest had axes on their shoulders.

A few steps away from this party, and apparently not in the least interested in what they were saying or doing, were Mr. Warren and Joe Morgan, who were talking earnestly about something.

Mr. Warren was the richest man in the country for miles around. He owned the hotel and most of the cottages at the beach; but he was seldom seen there, because he said he could find more rest and recreation in the woods, with his dog and gun for companions, than he could at a fashionable watering-place.

The cabin which the Morgans occupied, rent free, belonged to him, and so did the ground on which it stood; and it was owing to his influence that Silas had been permitted to establish his ferry.

But still Silas hated him, as he hated every one who was better off in the world than he was.

A little distance farther away stood a solitary individual, who, if the expression of his countenance could be taken as an index to his feelings, was mad enough to do something desperate.

He took the deepest interest in all that was going on before him, and indeed he had good reason for it. His livelihood depended upon what the commissioner and his jury of twelve disinterested freeholders might decide to do. A bridge at that particular place would ruin his occupation as effectually as it would break up the business of ferrying.

"That's Hobson," said Silas, looking around for his hat. "I don't wonder that he's mad. What do they want to put a bridge across here for, anyway? Ain't there a good ferry right in front of the door, and can't we take care of them that wants to go back and forth?"

"We can, but we don't," answered Dan. "When that horn toots, you never move till you get a good ready."

"I know that," assented Silas. "I ain't hired myself out for a slave yet, and them that expect me to jump the minute a man who has got more money than I have chooses to call on me, will find themselves fooled. I have always run this ferry to suit Silas Morgan, and nobody else."

"That there is just the p'int," observed Dan, sagely. "The way you run it may suit you, but it don't by no means suit the public. That's the reason they want a bridge here."

"But there ain't no good road."

"No, odds; they're going to build one out of the old log road, and make the distance from Bellville to the Beach shorter by five good long miles than it is now. They're going to tear t'other bridge down, and make all the travel come this way."

"Why, that will shut Hobson out in the cold entirely," exclaimed the ferryman. "He'll have to quit keeping hotel."

"That's just what old man Warren and them fellers down to the Beach wan't to do," said Dan. "I heared 'em say so. He always keeps a crowd of loafers around him, Hobson does, and there's so many shooting-matches going on in the grove behind his hotel, that it ain't safe for folks to drive past there with skittish horses. There's been five or six runaways along that road already."

"That's only an excuse for shutting him up, Dannie," said the ferryman, with a knowing wink at his hopeful son. "Hobson keeps the Halfway House, and it's natural for folks who are going to and from the Beach to stop there to water their horses and get a bite of lunch. They spend money with Hobson that they would otherwise spend at the Beach, and that's why old man Warren wants that hotel closed. It's about time for poor people to rise up and pertect themselves, seeing that the law won't do nothing for them. I don't wonder Hobson looks mad."

Having found his hat, Silas went out to exchange a few words of condolence with the man whose name he had just mentioned. He glanced at Joe's face as he passed, and the pleased expression he saw there was very different from the malevolent scowl with which he was welcomed by the proprietor of the Halfway House.

The latter was quite as angry as he looked to be, and the first words he uttered as the ferryman came up were:

"Now what I want to know is this: Are me and you obliged to stand here with our hands in our pockets, and see these rich men take the bread and butter out of the mouths of our families?"

"They are going to do worse by me than they are by you," answered Silas. "I can't start again if they break up my ferry, but you can."

"How, I'd like to know?" growled Hobson.

"Why, all the land around here belongs to old man Warren. Folks say that he's a mighty kind-hearted chap, though I never saw any signs of it in him, and you might buy or rent a piece of land, and build another and better hotel. You have the money to do it, for you have made many a dollar over your bar during the last two years."

"That's just what's the matter," cried Hobson, who became so angry when he thought of it that it was all he could do to restrain himself. "That's the reason old man Warren wants to shut me up—because he knows that I am making a little money. He won't sell or rent me a foot of land, for I tried him as soon as I found out that a new road was coming through here."

"That's worse than I thought for," said the ferryman, in a sympathizing tone which was more assumed than real.

Hobson's business interests were likely to suffer more severely than his own, and he was glad of it.

"It is bad enough, I tell you," said the proprietor of the Halfway House. "But you can say to your folks that it is going to be a dear piece of business for old man Warren. If I don't damage him for more thousands than he does me for hundreds, it will not be because I don't try."

"It looks mighty strange to me that he should go out of his way to be so scandalous mean to some, while he is so good to others," said Silas, reflectively. "I don't pertend to understand it. Here he is, robbing me of the onliest chance I had to make a living during the summer, and yet he's standing over there now, offering that Joe of our'n a chance to make a hundred and twenty dollars."

"What doing?" inquired Hobson, who was paying more attention to the surveyor's movements than he was to Silas.

"You remember them English pa'tridges he brought over here to stock his woods, the same year he built that big hotel down to the Beach, don't you?" asked Silas, in reply.

"I should say I did," answered Hobson. "You shot the most of them, and I got the rest, all except the few that Dan managed to catch with his snares and that little black dog of his'n. I wish I could see him cleaned out of everything as slick as he was cleaned out of them birds."

"Well, he's got a new supply of them, old man Warren has—six hundred dollars' worth."

Hobson opened his eyes and began taking some interest in what the ferryman was saying to him.

"I am powerful glad to hear it," said he. "If he won't let me keep hotel and support myself, he can just make up his mind that he's got to keep me in grub. I won't allow myself to go hungry while his covers are well stocked, I bet you. I'll earn a tolerable good living by shooting over his grounds this fall and winter."

"But you will have more bother in doing it than you did last season," said Silas, who then went on to repeat what Dan had told him concerning the game-warden who was to live in Mr. Warren's woods, and devote his entire time and attention to keeping trespassers at a distance.

This seemed a novel idea to Hobson, who finally said:

"If that's the case, we'll have to go somewhere else to do our shooting."

"What for?" demanded the ferryman, who was not a little surprised. "Do you think that that little Joe of our'n could 'rest us if we didn't want him to?"

"Of course not; but he could report us, and the sheriff could arrest us," answered Hobson.

Silas clenched both his fists and glared savagely at Joe, who was just then holding an animated colloquy with his brother Dan upon some point concerning which there was evidently a wide diversity of opinion.

CHAPTER V. WHAT DAN OVERHEARD.

"If I thought that Joe of our'n would be mean enough to carry tales on me and have me 'rested, I'd larrup him 'till his own mother wouldn't know him," declared Silas, who grew so angry at the mere mention of such a thing, that he wanted to catch up a stick and fall upon the boy at once.

"And make the biggest kind of a fool of yourself by doing of it," said Hobson, calmly. "Look a-here, Silas, you want to keep away from old man Warren's woods this winter."

"With them six hundred dollars' worth of birds running around loose and no law to pertect 'em?" cried the ferryman. "I'll show you whether I will or not. I tell you I'll have the last one of them before the winter's over. It is true that I don't care for such trifling things as the ferry any more, 'cause I've got a plan in my head that'll—hum! But I want to get even with old man Warren for breaking up my business, don't I?"

"Of course you do; and the best way to do it is to make him give something toward your support. Joe ain't of age yet, and you can compel him to hand over every cent he earns."

"That's so!" exclaimed the ferryman, who now began to see what his friend Hobson was aiming at. "That Joe of our'n makes right smart by acting as guide and pack-horse to the strangers who come here to shoot and fish; but I never thought to ask him for any of it. He always gives it to his mother."

"Why don't you make him give it to you, and then you can spend it as you please?" said Hobson, hoping that the ferryman would act upon his advice, and so increase his wealth by the addition of Joe's hard earnings that he could squander more at the bar of the Halfway House than he was in the habit of doing. "The head of the family ought to have the handling of all the money that comes into the house—that's my creed."

"And a very good creed it is, too," replied Silas, who told himself that he must be very stupid indeed not to have seen the matter in its true light long ago. "I'll turn over a new leaf this very day. Joe shall give me every cent of them hundred and twenty dollars, and I'll have what I can make out of them birds besides."

"There you go again," said Hobson, in a tone of disgust. "You mustn't go to work the first thing and kill the goose that lays the golden egg. If you begin on the first day of September, when the pa'tridge season opens, and shoot all them birds, there won't be none left for Joe to watch; and then old man Warren will tell Joe that he don't need him any longer. See the point?"

"I'd be stone blind if I couldn't see it," answered Silas, "and it makes me madder than I was before. Don't you understand that old Warren means to perfect them birds till they have increased to as many as a million, mebbe, and then he'll bring in a lot of his city friends and shoot 'em for fun—for fun, mind you—while poor folks like me and you, who need the money we could make out of 'em to buy grub and clothes—we'll be took up if we so much as set foot on t'other side his fences. Dog-gone such doings! 'Tain't right nor justice that it should be so, and I ain't going to stand it no longer. Thank goodness, I won't have to! I've got a plan in my head that'll—hum!"

Hobson made no response. Indeed, he did not seem to hear what Silas said to him, for he was straining his ears to catch the conversation that was-carried on by Mr. Warren and the surveyor, who were now coming up the bank.

He must have heard more than he wanted to, for, with an oath and a threat that made the ferryman's hair stand on end, Hobson hurried toward the place where he had left his horse. He mounted and rode away.

Mr. Warren and the surveying party left a few minutes later, followed by the commissioner and his jury; and Silas turned about and walked slowly toward his cabin.

He had not made many steps before he found himself confronted by his hopeful son Dan.

"Well," said Silas, cheerfully, "we won't have to pull that heavy flat across the river many more days, and the next time you go over you can take your gun with you and put a charge of shot into that horn, if you feel like it. Hallo! What's the matter of you?"

Dan's clenched hands were held close by his side, his black eyes were flashing dangerously, and he stood before his father, looking the very picture of rage and excitement.

"Can't you speak, and tell me what's the matter of you?" demanded Silas, who could not remember when he had seen Dan in such a towering passion before. "I know it's mighty hard to give up the ferry just 'cause them rich folks down to the Beach have took it into their heads that they don't want one here, but we can make enough out of them birds of old man Warren's to—"

Dan interrupted his father with a gesture of impatience, and snapped his fingers in the air.

"I don't care that for the ferry," he sputtered. "I am glad to see it go, for it has brung me more backaches than dimes, I tell you."

"Well, then, what's the matter of you?" Silas once more inquired. "You'd best make that tongue of your'n more lively, if you want me to listen to you, 'cause I ain't got no time to waste. I'm going in to talk to that Joe of our'n about the job that old man Warren offered to give him."

These words had a most surprising effect upon Dan. He bounded into the air like a rubber ball, knocked his heels together, and yelled loudly for somebody to hold him on the ground.

"Of all the mean fellers in the world that I ever see, that Joe of our'n is the beatenest," said he, as soon as he could speak. "Now, pap, wait till I tell you, and see if you don't say so yourself."

The ferryman, recalling some words that Dan let fall during their hurried interview in the cabin, told himself that he knew right where the trouble was; but he listened attentively to the story, which the angry boy related substantially as follows:

While Dan was taking his ease on the bank, and Joe was hauling in the sweeps and making the flat secure, Mr. Warren came up, arriving on the ground five or ten minutes before the commissioner and the surveying party got there.

He hitched his horse to the nearest tree, walked down the bank, and greeted Joe with a hearty good-morning, paying no attention to Dan, who was so highly enraged at this oversight or willful neglect on the part of the wealthy visitor, that he shook his fist at him as soon as he turned his back.

He was not long in finding out what brought Mr. Warren there, for he distinctly overheard every word that passed between him and Joe.

As he listened, the expression of rage that had settled on his face gradually gave place to a look of surprise and delight; and finally Dan became wonderfully good-natured, and showed it by rubbing his hands together, grinning broadly, and winking at the trees on the opposite bank of the river.

"Well, Joseph," said Mr. Warren, cheerfully, "going to school next term?"

"I am afraid I can't," replied Joe, sadly. "I don't see how I can afford it. Mother needs every cent I can give her. I must work every day, and shall be glad to cut some wood for you, if you will give me the chance."

"Then you can cut it by yourself, I bet you," muttered Dan. "I won't help you; I'd rather hunt and trap."

"I shall need a good supply of wood," said Mr. Warren, "but I thought of giving your father and Dan a chance at that."

"Thank-ee for nothing," said Dan, under his breath. "Pap can take the job if he wants to, but I won't tech it. I am getting tired of doing such hard work, and am on the lookout for something easy."

"I think I have better work for you, Joe," continued the visitor; whereupon Dan, who had thrown himself at full length on the bank, straightened up and began listening with more eagerness. "It is something that will take up every moment of your time during the day, and if you do your duty faithfully, you will find the work quite as hard and wearisome as chopping wood, and more confining; but you will have your evenings to yourself, and abundant opportunity to do as much reading and studying as you please. You know that one of our greatest men, Martin Van Buren, laid the foundation of his knowledge by studying by the light of a pine-knot on the hearth after his day's work was over. But you will not have to do that. I will give you a warm, comfortable house to live in, supply your table from my own, lend you books from my library, and furnish you with a lamp to read and study by. If you lay up a little information on some useful subject every day, you will have quite a store on hand by the time winter is over."

"What sort of a job is that, do you reckon?" said Dan to himself. "It's a soft thing, so far as the perviding goes, but what's the work? that's the p'int."

It must have been the very question Joe was revolving in his mind, for when Mr. Warren ceased speaking, he asked:

"What will you expect me to do in return for all this?"

"I am coming to that," answered the visitor, moving a step or two nearer to Joe, while Dan leaned as far forward as he could, stretched out his long neck and placed one hand behind his ear, so that he might catch every word. "You know that I have about six thousand acres of woodland, which is so utterly worthless that no man, who had his senses about him, would take it as a gift if he had to clear and cultivate it. It isn't even good enough for pasture; but it was a tolerably fair shooting-ground until I was foolish enough to build that hotel down there at the Beach. That brought in a crowd of city sportsmen, and between them and the resident market-shooters, the game, both large and small, has been pretty well cleaned out."

"Well, what of it," muttered Dan. "If I know anything about such matters, them deer and birds and rabbits belonged to us poor folks as much as they did to you."

"I like to shoot occasionally," Mr. Warren went on, "but the last time I went up there with a party of friends, we did not get enough to pay us for the tramp we took; so two years ago I went to considerable expense to restock those woods, and even offered to pay the market-shooters if they would let the birds alone until they had time to increase. But they wouldn't do it, and the consequence was that the English partridges and quails that cost me six dollars a pair were served up on somebody's dinner-table."

"Six dollars a pair!" whispered Dan, who could hardly believe that he had heard aright. "Pap didn't by no means get that much for them he shot. It's nice to be rich."

"My experience with those birds," continued Mr. Warren, "proved to my satisfaction that they are hardy and able to endure our severe winters. So I determined to try it again, and day before yesterday I turned down a hundred pairs of English partridges and quails—six hundred dollars' worth."

Dan was almost ready to jump from the ground when he heard this, and it was all he could do to refrain from giving audible expression to his delight.

CHAPTER VI. THE YOUNG GAME-WARDEN.

"Whoop-pee!" was Dan's mental exclamation. "I've struck a banana. Me and pap I'll get rich the first thing you know. But what makes old man Warren come here to tell us about it?"

"I certainly hope you will be able to preserve them this time," said Joe, who could not see what these expensive birds had to do with the comfortable home, the unlimited supply of books, and the good living, of which his visitor had spoken. "It would be a great pity to lose them after going to so much trouble and paying out so much money for them."

"That's what I think, and it is what Mr. Hallet thinks, also. You know his wood-lot adjoins mine—there is no fence between them—and he has turned down the same number."

The eavesdropper fairly gasped for breath when he heard this; but quickly recovering from his amazement, he raised his hands before his face, with all the fingers spread out, and began a little problem in arithmetic.

"That makes—makes—le' me see! By Moses it makes twelve—twelve hundred dollars' worth of birds. I'm going to sell that old muzzle-loader of mine the first good chance I get, and buy a breech-loader, and one of them j'inted fish-poles, and some of them fine hunting clothes, and—whoop-pee! I've struck two bananas; and I'll look as spick and span as the best of them city sportsmen by this time next year. But look a-here, a minute, Dan," he added, to himself, confidentially, "Don't you say a word to pap about them birds that's been turned loose on Hallet's place. Them's your'n, and you don't go halvers with no living person."

"The difficulty in preserving them lies right here," said Mr. Warren. "Our native birds are protected by law during certain months in the year, but the law doesn't say a word about imported game. If I catch a man shooting over my grounds in the close season, I can have him arrested and fined; but he could shoot these English birds before my face, and I could not help myself. We hope some day to induce the Legislature to pass a law protecting imported as well as native game; but until we can do that, we must protect it ourselves to the best of our ability. We have men at work now posting our land, and hereafter any one who sets a foot over my fence or Hallet's will be liable for trespass.

"I reckon you'll have to catch him before you can prove anything agin him, won't you?" soliloquized Dan. "But why don't he tell that Joe of our'n what he wants of him?"

"Of course, Mr. Hallet and myself have enough to do without spending valuable time in watching these birds," added the visitor, "and so we have decided to employ game-wardens to do it for us. There will be two wardens, one for each place, and we shall pay them out of our own pockets. I have selected you because I believe you to be honest and faithful, and I know that you are ambitious to better your condition. I am always on the lookout for such boys, and when I find one I like to give him a helping hand."

"Then it's mighty strange that you never diskivered me," said Dan, to himself. "If there's anybody in the world who wants awful bad to be something better'n the ragged vagabone he is, I am that feller. Dog-gone such luck as I do have, any way! Why didn't he offer that soft job to me, instead of giving it to that Joe of our'n? I am older'n he is, and it would be the properest thing for me to have the first chance."

"It is worth something to live up there in the woods alone for eight months—from the first of September to the last of April—but your surroundings will be as pleasant as they can be made under the circumstances. In the first place, there is a tight log-house, with a carpet on the floor, and a lean-to behind it to serve as a wood-shed. You know that the fierce winter winds drive the snow into pretty deep drifts up there in the mountains, and if you are as provident as I think you are, you will keep that shed full. You don't want to turn out of a stormy morning, when the mercury is below zero, to cut fire-wood, when you ought to be scattering grain around for the birds to eat. There is plenty of furniture in the cabin, and all the dishes you will be likely to need. I have spent a good many months in camp, first and last, and being posted, I don't think I have forgotten anything. Your pay, which you can have as often as you want it, will be fifteen dollars a month," said Mr. Warren in conclusion. "That is as much as farm-hands command hereabout, and you will be much better off than a woodchopper, because you will be earning money all the while, no matter how bad the weather may be. What do you say?"

Dan listened with all his ears to catch his brother's reply, but, to his great surprise, Joe did not make any reply.

"What's the fool studying about, do you reckon?" was the inquiry which Dan propounded to himself. "Why don't he speak up and say he'll take it? If he does, me and pap will have easy times with them birds, 'cause of course Joe wouldn't be mean enough to pester us. But if he don't take it, and old man Warren gets somebody else for game-warden, then the case will be different, and me and pap will have to watch out."

"You don't say anything, Joe," continued Mr. Warren, seeing that the boy hesitated and hung his head. "If you must work during the coming winter instead of going to school, I don't think you can find any employment that will be more to your liking."

"I know I couldn't, sir," replied Joe, quickly; "but that isn't what I am thinking about. The fact is—you see—"

The boy paused and looked down at the ground again. He knew that his own father was more to blame than any one else for the loss of the birds that had been "turned down" in Mr. Warren's wood-lot two years before, and it was not quite clear to Joe how his wealthy visitor could have so much confidence in him. Why should he wish to employ the son of the man who had robbed him, to keep trespassers off his grounds, and exercise supervision over the new supply of game he had just purchased?

And there was another thing that came into his mind:

Silas Morgan and Dan were two of the most notorious poachers in the county, and Joe knew that when the grouse season opened, they would be the very first to shoulder their guns, call their dogs to heel and start for Mr. Warren's woods.

If he accepted the position offered him, it would be his duty to order them off. They wouldn't go, of course, and the next thing would be to report them to Mr. Warren, who, beyond a doubt, would have warrants issued for their arrest.

That would be bad indeed, Joe told himself; but would it cause him any more sorrow than he felt whenever he saw his mother setting out on one of those long fatiguing walks to the house of a neighbor, where she earned the pitiful sum of a dollar by doing a hard day's work at washing or scrubbing? The money he could give her every month would save her all that, and provide her with many things that were necessary to her comfort.

When Joe thought of his mother, his hesitation vanished.

"I'll take it, Mr. Warren," said he, with an air of resolution, "and I am very grateful indeed to you for offering it to me. Now, will you tell me when you want me to go up there, and just what you expect me to?"

To Dan's great disappointment and disgust, Mr. Warren took Joe by the arm, and led him away out of earshot; but he heard him say something about shooting all the stray dogs that came into the woods, because they would do more damage among the few deer that were left, than so many wolves, and that was all he learned that day regarding Joe's instructions.

"Luck has come my way at last!" exclaimed Dan, who, for some reason or other seemed to be highly excited. "I can't hardly hold myself on the ground. I'll go down to old man Hallet's this very minute, and tell him that if he's needing a game-warden, I'm the chap he's waiting for. Then mebbe I won't have a nice little house all to myself, and good grub to grow fat on, as well as that Joe of our'n. I won't do no shooting, 'cause that would make too much noise, and give me away to old man Hallet; but I'll do a heap of trapping and snaring, I bet you. Hallo! who's them fellers?"

Dan had just caught sight of a large party of men, who were coming along the road which led from the ferry to the Beach.

Believing that they were about to cross the river, and that there was another hard pull in prospect with no money (for him) behind it, Dan was about to take to his heels, when some words that came to his ears arrested his footsteps.

The new-comers were the road commissioner and his party. They did not look toward Dan at all, and neither did they take the least pains to conceal the object of their visit from him.

"This is the place for the new bridge," said the surveyor. "It will cost the town a good deal less money to fix up the old log road in good shape, than it will to cut out and grade a new highway."

"And when the bridge is up, we shall be well rid of two nuisances—Hobson's grog-shop and Morgan's ferry, neither of which ought to have been tolerated as long as they have been," remarked one of the twelve freeholders, who had been summoned by the commissioner to determine where the bridge and the new road should be located. "When the other bridge is demolished, and the lower road shut up, the travel will have to come this way."

When Dan heard this, he felt like throwing his hat into the air. He hated the tooting of that horn, which was kept hung up on the limb of a tree on the other side of the river, as he hated no other sound in the world; and he was glad to know that he would soon hear it for the last time.

He did not make any demonstrations of delight, however, but stole silently away to carry the news to his father.

Joe's good fortune, and his own bright dreams of becoming Mr. Hallet's game-warden, at fifteen dollars a month, and the best kind of food thrown in, were uppermost in his mind, and they were the first things he intended to speak about when his father admitted him into the cabin; but he was so long in coming to the point that Silas grew impatient, and did not give him an opportunity to mention his own affairs at all.

"No matter; they'll keep," thought the boy, as the ferryman put on his hat and went out to talk to Hobson. "Now I wish old Warren would hurry up and go about his business, so't I can find out what 'rangements he's made with that Joe of our'n."

Dan had not long to wait. Even while he was communing with himself in this way, Mr. Warren took his leave, first shaking Joe warmly by the hand, and Dan lost no time in stepping to his brother's side.

CHAPTER VII. BROTHERLY LOVE.

"I don't wonder that you look like you was half tickled to death," was the way in which Dan began the conversation with his brother. "Did you ever dream that me and you would have such amazing good luck as has come to us this day? Now, let me tell you, it bangs me completely. Don't it you?"

Joe did not know how to reply to this. He had seldom seen Dan in so high spirits, and he could not imagine what he was referring to when he spoke of the good luck that had fallen to both of them.

"Say—don't it bang you?" repeated Dan. "Ain't me and you going to live like the richest of them this winter?"

"You and I?" said Joe, with no suspicion of the truth in his mind.

"That's what I remarked," exclaimed Dan, who could hardly keep from dancing in the excess of his joy. "I tell you, Joe," he added, confidentially, "if there's anything in life I take pleasure in, it's living in the woods during the winter, when you've got a tight roof to shelter you and plenty of firewood to burn, so't you don't have to go through the deep snow to cut it. That's what I call living, that is."

"I don't see how you happen to know so much about it. You never tried it."

"I know I never did; but didn't I tell you almost the very first word I said, that I'm going to try it this winter?"

"Oh!" said Joe, who now thought he began to understand the matter. "Are you going to be Mr. Hallet's game-warden?"

"Perzackly. You've hit centre the first time trying."

"Then I wonder why Mr. Warren did not say something to me about it."

And there was still another thing that caused Joe to wonder, although he made no reference to it. How did it come that Mr. Hallet, who knew how persistently Dan broke the law in regard to snaring birds and hares, and shooting out of season—how did it come that he had selected this poacher to act as his game-warden? He might as well have hired a wolf to watch his sheep.

"Now wait till I tell you," said Dan hastily. "The thing ain't quite settled yet, 'cause I ain't had no time to run down and see old man Hallet; but—"

"Aha!" exclaimed Joe.

"There ain't no 'aha' about it," cried Dan, who was angry in an instant. "Wait till I tell you. I ain't been down to see old man Hallet yet, but I'm going directly, and I'm going to say to him that if he wants somebody to keep an eye on them birds of his'n, I'm the man he's looking for. He'll be glad to take me, of course, 'cause if there's any one in the whole country who knows all about a game-warden's business, its me. But if he can't take me—if he has picked out another man before I get a chance to speak to him—me and you will go halvers on them hundred and twenty, won't we?"

"No, we won't," replied Joe, promptly.

"What for, won't we?" demanded Dan.

"For a good many reasons. In the first place, Mr. Warren seems to think that he needs but one warden, and that I can do all the work myself."

"Well, you can't, and you shan't, neither," Dan almost shouted.

And in order to show his brother how very much in earnest he was about it, he struck up a war-dance, and called loudly for somebody to hold him on the ground.

"And in the next place," continued Joe, who had witnessed these ebullitions of rage often enough to know that they never ended in anything more serious than an unnecessary expenditure of breath and strength on Dan's part—"in the next place, every cent I make this winter will go to mother, with the exception of the little I shall need to clothe myself."

"I'll bet you a good hoss that it don't," roared Dan, who was so angry that it was all he could do to keep from laying violent hands upon his brother. "Now let me tell you what's the gospel truth, Joe Morgan: If you don't go pardners with me in this business, I'll bust up the whole thing. If I don't get half them hundred and twenty dollars, you shan't have a cent to bless yourself with. I've been kicked and slammed around till I am tired of it, and I ain't going to ask my consent to stand it no longer."

"If you want money, go to work and earn it for yourself," said Joe. "You can't have any of mine."

"I'll show you whether I will or not. Now, let me tell you: I'll make more out of them birds this winter than you will. You're awful smart, but you'll find that there are them in the world that are just as smart as you be."

"I know what you mean by that," answered Joe, who had fully made up his mind to see trouble with Dan. "Now let me tell you something: If I catch you on Mr. Warren's grounds after I take charge of them, you will wish you had stayed away, mind that. I took this position because mother needs money, and having accepted it, I shall look out for my employer's interests the best I know how. But why do you go against me in this way? You ought to help me all you can."

"Then why don't you help me?" retorted Dan.

"You don't need it. You are able to help yourself, because you have no one else to look out for."

"Then I won't help you, neither. You want to keep a close watch over that shanty of your'n, or the first thing you know, you will come back to it some dark, cold night, almost froze to death, and it won't be there."

Joe walked off without making any reply, and Dan stood shaking his fists at him until he disappeared. Then he turned about to find himself face to face with his father, to whom he told his story, not forgetting to make a few artful additions, which he hoped would have the effect of making the ferryman as angry at Joe as he was himself.

A disinterested listener would have thought that Joe was the meanest brother any fellow ever had, and that Dan was deserving of better treatment at his hands.

"Now, I just want you to tell me what you think of that," said Dan, as he brought his highly-seasoned narrative to a close. "He's a most scandalous stingy chap, that Joe of our'n is. He wants to keep his good things all to himself. And—would you believe it, pap, if I didn't tell you?—he said he would as soon shoot your dog or mine as look at 'em, and that if we come fooling around where he was, he'd have us tooken up, sure pop."

Silas Morgan's eyes flashed, and an angry scowl settled on his swarthy face.

Dan was succeeding famously in his efforts to arouse his father's ire against the unoffending Joe—at least he thought so—and he hoped to increase it until it broke out into some violent demonstration.

"Them's his very words, pap," continued Dan, with unblushing mendacity. "Since he took up with that rich man awhile ago, he has outgrowed his clothes, and me and you ain't good enough for him. Me and Joe could have had just the nicest kind of times up there in the woods, and by doing a little extry work on the sly, we could have snared enough of old man Warren's birds, and Hal—um!"

Dan caught his breath just in time. He was about to say that he and Joe could have snared enough of Mr. Warren's birds and Hallet's to run the amount of their joint earnings up to two hundred dollars; but he suddenly remembered that his father was not yet aware that Mr. Hallet's covers had been freshly stocked, and that that was a matter that was to be kept from his knowledge, so that Dan could have the field to himself.

But the ferryman was quick to catch some things, if he was dull in comprehending others, and Dan had inadvertently given him an idea to ponder over at his leisure.

"But then I don't care for such trifling things as birds any more," said Silas to himself. "If Hallet has been fooling away his money for more pa'tridges, Dan can have the fun of shooting 'em, if he wants it; and while he is tramping around through the cold looking for 'em, I'll be snug and warm at home, living like a lord on the money I took out of that cave up there in the mountings. What was you saying, Dannie?"

"I said that me and Joe could have made right smart by doing a little trapping on the quiet," answered Dan. "But he wouldn't hear to my going up there to live with him. What's grub enough for one is grub enough for two, and I could have had piles of things that come from old man Warren's table, and never cost you a red cent the whole winter. More than that, being on the ground all the while, it wouldn't be no trouble at all for me to knock over one of them deer now and then, and that would save you from buying so much bacon; but that mean Joe of our'n he wouldn't hear to it, and now I'm going to knock all his 'rangements higher'n the moon."

"What be you going to do, Dannie?" Silas asked, in a voice so calm and steady that the boy backed off a step or two and looked at him suspiciously.

Was his father about to side with Joe? Dan was really afraid of it, and his voice did not have that resolute ring in it when he answered:

"I'm going to set some snares up there where Joe won't never think of looking for them, and by the time Christmas gets here I'll have every one of them English birds in the market and sold for cash."

The ferryman thrust one hand deep into his pocket, and shook the other menacingly at Dan.

"Look a-here, son," said he, in a tone which he never assumed unless he meant that his words should carry weight with them, "you just keep away from old man Warren's woods, and let them English birds be. Are you listening to your pap?"

"What for?" Dan almost gasped.

"'Cause why; that's what for," was the not very satisfactory answer. "You want to pay right smart heed to what I'm saying to you, 'cause if you don't, I'll wear a hickory out over your back, big as you think you be."

"Well, if this ain't a trifle the beatenest thing I ever heard of, I don't want a cent," began Dan, who was utterly amazed. "Do you want them—that rich feller to have all the fine shooting to himself?"

"That ain't what I'm thinking about just now," replied the ferryman. "I want Joe to earn them hundred and twenty dollars; see the p'int?"

"Not all of it?" exclaimed Dan.

"Yes, every cent."

"Can't I make him go pardners with me?"

"No, you can't. I want Joe to have the handling of it all."

"Then you won't never see none of it; you can bet high on that."

"Yes, I reckon I'll see the whole of it. You and Joe ain't twenty-one year old yet, and the law gives me the right to take every cent you make."

For a moment Dan stood speechless with rage and astonishment; but quickly recovering the use of his tongue, he squared himself for a fight, and demanded furiously:

"And is that the reason you never give me a red for breaking my back with that ferry? Whoop! hold me on the ground, somebody!"

"If I had a good hickory in my hands, I reckon I could very soon make you willing to hold yourself on the ground," said his father, calmly.

"Whoop!" yelled Dan, jumping into the air, and knocking his heels together. "This bangs me; don't it you? The men who was here just now said you was one nuisance, and Hobson was another; and I am so glad that the business is clean busted up, that—"

Silas suddenly thrust out one of his long arms, but his fingers closed upon the empty air instead of upon Dan's collar. The boy escaped his grasp by ducking his head like a flash, and then he straightened up and took to his heels.

CHAPTER VIII. JOE'S PLANS IN DANGER.

Silas Morgan made no attempt at pursuit, for he had learned by experience that he could not hold his own with Dan in a foot-race; but he knew how to bide his time.

"Never mind, son," he shouted. "I'll catch you to-night after you have gone to bed."

"These threatening words arrested Dan's headlong flight, and he stopped to shout back:

"You just lay an ugly hand onto me, and it'll be worse for you and them setter dogs that you've got shut up in the wood-shed. I know well enough that nobody ever give 'em to you, and that that man with the long black whiskers who was here last year would be willing to give something handsome—"

The ferryman couldn't stand it any longer, for the boy was getting too near the truth to suit him. He began looking about on the ground for something to throw at him; whereupon Dan turned and took to his heels again, and quickly disappeared around the corner of the cabin.

"I wish that black-whiskered man had them setter dogs, and that I was shet of them," muttered Silas, as he walked slowly up the bank. "I did think that mebbe I could get a big reward for giving them back; but I don't care for such things now. The money that's hid in the cave is what I'm thinking of these times."

The ferryman was left to his own devices for the rest of the day; for Joe, highly elated over his unexpected fortune, had gone to meet his mother, so that he might tell her the good news without being overheard by any of the rest of the family, and Dan was on his way to Mr. Hallet's to offer him his services as game-warden.

But Silas was glad to be alone at this particular time, for he had something mysterious and exciting to think about—a cave in the mountains that had an abundance of treasure in it. He had long looked forward to something of this sort, for he had often dreamed about it; and when he read in a torn newspaper, which came from the store wrapped around one of his wife's bundles, that some workmen, while digging for the foundations of a public building in a distant city, had come upon an earthen jar that was filled to the brim with American and Mexican coins of ancient date—when he read this, Silas took it as an omen that his bright dreams of acquiring wealth without labor were on the eve of being realized.

The man's first care was to let out the dogs and unhitch the horse from the wood-rack, and his second to hunt up a shady spot on the bank and look for the letter which he had stowed away in his pocket.

But it was not to be found. The ferryman's clothes, like all the other things that belonged to him, were sadly in need of repairs, and when he went to shut up the dogs, the letter had worked its way through his pocket, down the leg of his trowsers, and fallen to the ground in front of the wood-shed door, where it lay until Dan came along and picked it up.

Meanwhile Joe was strolling leisurely along the road in the direction from which he knew his mother would come, when her day's work was over.

"She will be glad to learn that she has done her last washing and scrubbing for other folks," the boy kept saying to himself. "When winter comes, and the roads are blocked with drifts, she can sit down in front of a warm fire and stay there, instead of wading through the deep snow to earn a dollar. I am in a position to take care of her now, and I could do it easy enough if father and Dan would only let me alone. They call me stingy because I will not share my hard earnings with them; but they never think of sharing with me, nor did I ever see one of them give mother anything. On the contrary, if they know that she's got a dime or two saved up for a rainy day, they never give her a minute's peace till they get it for themselves. Now, is there any way I can work it so that mother can have everything she wants, and yet be able to say that she hasn't got a cent in the house?"

While Joe was revolving this problem in his mind, he heard a familiar bark behind him, and faced about to see his brother Dan approaching on a dog-trot. He was followed by the only friend and companion he had in the world—a little black cur, which no self-respecting boy would have accepted as a gift.

But mean and insignificant as he looked, Bony was of great use to his master. He was the best coon, grouse and squirrel dog in the country for miles around, and it was by his aid that Dan earned money to buy his clothes and ammunition. Bony got more kicks than caresses in return for his services, but that did not seem to lessen his affection for Dan.

"I allowed that I knew where you was gone, and that I'd come up with you directly," said the latter, as soon as he arrived within speaking distance. "Say, Joe, have you thought over that little plan of mine?"

Joe replied that he had not.

"Then, why don't you think it over?" continued Dan. "Of course, I don't expect you to go pardners with me for nothing. I've got my consent to do all I can to help you. I'll even agree to cut the wood, cook the grub, keep the shanty in order, and do all the rest of the mean work, while you are taking your ease or looking after the birds. All you've got to do is to say the word, and me and you will have the finest kind of times this winter."

But Joe didn't say the word. In fact, he did not say anything, and, of course, his silence made Dan angry again. The latter was bound to handle at least a portion of his brother's wages, and he did not care what course he took to accomplish his object.

"You ain't forgot what I told you awhile back, I reckon, have you?" said Dan, with suppressed fury.

"No, I haven't forgotten it. I can recall everything you said to me."

"Then, why don't you pay some heed to it? Do you want to see your business busted up? Look a here, Joe Morgan: You say you are going to give all that there money to mam. If you do, I'll have some of it in spite of you. I'll tell mam that I want my share, and she'll hand it over without no words, 'cause she knows well enough that I'll turn the house out doors if she don't do as I say. She's heard me calling for somebody to hold me on the ground, and she don't like to see me that way, 'cause she knows I'm mad."

"I know that you have worried a good deal of money out of mother, first and last," said Joe, angrily, "but you needn't think you can frighten her into giving you any of mine, because she won't have any."

"You stingy, good-for-nothing scamp! you're going back on your mam, are you?" shouted Dan, who could scarcely believe that he was not dreaming. "I never thought that of you. You're going to have the softest kind of a job all winter, and make stacks and piles of money, and never give a cent of it to mam, be you?"

"Mother will have everything she wants, but still she will not touch a cent of my earnings," answered Joe, calmly.

"Whoop! Hold me on the ground, somebody!" yelled Dan, striking up his war dance. "Then how'll mam get the things she wants?"

"On a written order, and in no other way."

"Who'll give that there order?"

"Mr. Warren, whom I shall ask to act as my banker. I've got to do something to keep you from bothering the life out of mother, and that is what I have decided upon."

"Whoop!" shouted Dan again. "Pap won't agree to no such bargain as that there, I bet you, and neither will I."

"What has father got to say about my business?"

"He's got a good deal to say about it, the first thing you know," answered Dan, with a triumphant air.

His only object in hastening on to overtake his brother was that he might torment him by calling his attention to a point of law that Joe had never thought of before.

"You ain't twenty-one year old yet, my fine feller, and pap's got the right to make you hand over every red cent you earn. He told me so; and he furder said that he was going to take the last dollar of them hundred and twenty that you are going to make this winter. So there, now. I told you that there was them in the world that's just as smart as you think you be, and me and pap are the fellers. He's a mighty hard old chap to get the better of, pap is, and so be I. You can't do it nohow you fix it."

It looked that way, sure enough, thought Joe, who was greatly surprised and bewildered.

He knew very well that his father could take his earnings, if he were mean enough to do it, but, as we have said, the matter had never been brought home to him before. He had always given his money to his mother, and Silas had never raised any objection to it.

The reason was because he did not think of it, and besides, the amounts were too small to do him any good; they were not worth the rumpus which the ferryman knew would be raised about his ears if he interfered and tried to turn Joe's earnings into his own pocket.

But things were different now. The young game-warden's prospective wages amounted to a goodly sum in the aggregate, and Silas was resolved to "turn over a new leaf," and assert his authority as head of the house.

Joe, on the other hand, was fully determined that his mother alone should profit by his winter's work, and as he was a resolute fellow, and as fearless as a boy could be, it was hard to tell how the matter was destined to end. But there was trouble in store for him; there could be no doubt about that.

"What do you say now?" asked Dan, who had little difficulty in reading the thoughts that were passing through his brother's mind, they showed so plainly on his face. "You're thinking of kicking agin me and pap, but I tell you that you'd best not do it. Will you be sensible and go pardners, or have your business busted up?"

"Neither," answered Joe, turning so fiercely upon his persecutor that the latter recoiled a step or two. "Now, if you don't let me alone, I will go to Mr. Warren and see if he can find means to make you."

"Sho!" said Dan, with a grin, "you don't mean it?"

"Yes, I do. It may surprise you to know that you have put yourself in danger of being locked up."

"Not much, I ain't," said Dan, confidently. "I ain't done a single thing yet."

"But you have made threats, and Mr. Warren could have you put under bonds."

"He'd have lots of fun trying that," replied Dan, who laughed loudly at the idea of such a thing. "Why, man, I ain't got none."

"Of course you haven't, and you couldn't furnish them either, so you would have to go to jail."

"Great Moses!" Dan managed to ejaculate.

There was no grin on his face now, nor even the sign of one. He was astonished as well as frightened.

It had never occurred to him that his brother could invoke the law to protect him, but he saw it plainly enough now, and he knew by the way Joe looked at him that he had been crowded just about as far as he intended to go.

When the latter moved on down the road, Dan made no attempt to stop him. He backed toward a log, sat down on it, and kept his eyes fastened upon Joe until a bend in the road hid him from view.

CHAPTER IX. VOLUNTEERS.

"I don't know what answer to make you, boys. I have no desire to interfere with your pleasures, and I think you have always found me ready to listen to any reasonable proposition; but this latest scheme of yours looks to me to be a little—you know. I don't believe that Bob's father will consent to it."

"Suppose you give your consent, and then we will see what we can do with Bob's father. If we can say that you are willing, he'll come to terms without any coaxing."

"I don't see what objection there can be to it. We can't get into mischief up there in the mountains, and we'll promise to study hard every spare minute we get. There!"

"And be fully prepared to go on with our class when the spring term begins. Now!"

The first speaker was Mr. Hallet, who leaned back in his easy-chair and twirled his eye-glasses around his finger, while he looked at the two uneasy, mischief-loving boys who stood before him.

Tom Hallet was his nephew and ward, and Bob Emerson was the son of an old school-friend who lived in Bellville, ten miles away.

Bob, who was a fine, manly fellow, was a great favorite with both uncle and nephew, and had a standing invitation to spend all his vacations with them at their comfortable home among the Summerdale hills.

To quote from Bob, Mr. Hallet's house was eminently a place for a tired school-boy to get away to. The fishing in the lake, and in the clear, dancing streams that emptied into it, was fine; young squirrels were always abundant after the first of August; and when September came, the law was "off" on grouse, wild turkeys and deer. Hares and 'coons were plenty, and Tom's little beagle knew right where to go to find them. Better than all, according to the boys' way of thinking, Mr. Hallet was a jolly old bachelor, who thoroughly enjoyed life in a quiet way, and who meant that every one around him should do the same.

Taking all these things into consideration, it was little wonder that Bob Emerson looked forward to his yearly "outings" with the liveliest anticipations of pleasure.

The Summerdale hills, in days gone by, had been a hunter's paradise; but, sad to relate, their glory was fast passing away, like that of many another place which had once been noted for the abundance of its game and fish.

Mr. Warren, to use his own language, had been foolish enough to build a hotel at the Beach, and to connect it with Bellville by a stage route. This brought an influx of strangers, some of whom called themselves sportsmen, who did more to depopulate the woods and streams than Silas Morgan, Hobson, and a few others of that ilk, could have accomplished in a year's steady shooting and angling.

Their advent gave rise to a class of men who had never before been known in that region—to wit, guides. There were some good and honest ones among them, of course; but, as a rule, they were a shiftless, lawless class—men who lived from hand to mouth, and who looked upon game laws as so many infringements of their rights, which were to be defied and resisted in any way they could think of.

Up to the time the hotel was built, these men lived in utter ignorance of the fact that there were laws in force which prohibited hunting and fishing at certain seasons of the year; but one year the District Game Protector came up on the stage to look into things, and when he went back to Bellville he took with him a guide and his employer, whom he had caught in the act of shooting deer, when the law said that they should not be molested.

This unexpected interference with their bread and butter astonished and enraged the rest of the guides, who at once held an indignation meeting, and resolved that they would not submit to any such outrageous things as game laws, in the making of which their opinions and desires had not been consulted.

They boldly declared that they would continue to hunt and fish whenever they felt like it, and any officer who came to the hills to stop them would be likely to get himself into business.

A few of the residents, including Mr. Warren and Mr. Hallet, had tried hard to bring about a better state of things.

They had gone to the expense of restocking their almost tenantless woods, and had been untiring in their efforts to have every poacher and law-breaker arrested and punished for his misdeeds; but all they had succeeded in doing thus far was to call down upon their heads the hearty maledictions of the whole ruffianly crew, who owed them a grudge and only awaited a favorable opportunity to pay it.

This was the way things stood on the morning that Tom Hallet, accompanied by his friend Bob, presented himself before his uncle, with the request that he would permit them to keep an eye on his English partridges and quails during the ensuing winter—in other words, that he would empower them to act as his game-wardens.

Mr. Hallet was not at all surprised, for the boys had sprung so many "hare-brained schemes" on him, that he was ready for anything; but still he took a few minutes in which to consider the proposition before he made them any reply.

"What in the world put that notion into your heads, anyway?" said Mr. Hallet, continuing the conversation which we have so unceremoniously interrupted. "Is it simply an excuse to get out of school for the winter?"

The boys indignantly denied that they had any idea of such a thing. They liked their school and everything connected with it; but they thought it would be fun to spend a few months in the woods. And since Uncle Hallet would have to employ somebody to act as game-warden, or run the risk of having all his costly birds killed by trespassers, why couldn't he employ them as well as any one else?

"Well, you two do think up the queerest ways for having fun that I even heard of," said Mr. Hallet. "I know something about camp-life, and you don't; and I tell you—"

"Why, Uncle," exclaimed Tom, "haven't we already spent a whole week in camp since Bob came up here?"

"A whole week!" repeated Mr. Hallet. "Yes, and it tired you out, and you were glad enough to get home. I know that 'camping out' looks very well on paper, but I tell you that it is the hardest kind of work, even for a lazy person, to say nothing of a couple of uneasy youngsters, who can't keep still for five minutes at a time to save their lives. Besides, how do I know that you wouldn't shoot some of my blue-headed birds, as Morgan calls them?"

"Don't you suppose that we know a ruffed grouse from an English partridge or quail?" demanded Tom. "We are not so liable to make mistakes in that regard as others might be. Who is Mr. Warren going to hire for his warden?"

"I believe he has gone up to Morgan's to-day to speak to Joe about it."

"I don't know how that will work," said Bob, reflectively. "Joe is all right, but his father and brother are not, and I am afraid they will make trouble for him."

"I thought of that, and so did Warren," answered Mr. Hallet, "and it is a point that you two would do well to consider before you insist on going into the mountains this winter. I am told that Hobson is furious over the opening of the new road, and that he and a few of his friends have threatened to burn the houses Warren and I built up there in the woods, and to drive out anybody we may put there to act as game-wardens."

When Tom and Bob heard this, they exchanged glances that were full of meaning.

Uncle Hallet's words showed them that there was a prospect for excitement during the coming winter, and the knowledge of this fact made them all the more determined to carry their point.

"Oh, you needn't look at each other in that way," said Mr. Hallet, with a laugh. "I know what you are thinking about, and I have no notion of allowing you to do something to get these poachers and law-breakers down on you. However I am going to the village directly, and perhaps I'll drop in and see what Bob's father thinks about it."

"Don't forget to tell him that we have your full and free consent," began Tom.

"But I haven't given it," interrupted Mr. Hallet, adjusting his eye-glasses across the bridge of his nose and reaching for his paper.

"And that we shall go along with all our lessons just as fast as the boys in school will," chimed in Bob.

"I'll not forget it; but I shall be much surprised at your father if he believes it."

Uncle Hallet resumed his reading, and the boys, taking this as a hint that he had said all he had to say on the subject, put on their hats and left the room.

"It's all right, Bob," said Tom, gleefully.

"I am sure of it," replied Bob. "We've got Uncle Hallet on our side, and it will be no trouble for him to talk father over. Now let's finish that letter to Mr. Morgan, and then go up and put it in his wood-pile."

So saying, Bob went up the stairs three at a jump, Tom following close at his heels.

CHAPTER X. WHY THE LETTER WAS WRITTEN.

When the boys reached the landing at the head of the stairs, they turned into Tom's room, the door of which stood invitingly open.

Bob seated himself at a table and picked up a pen, while Tom leaned over his shoulder and fastened his eyes upon the unfinished letter, to which reference was made at the close of the last chapter.

"Let's see—how far did we get?" said the latter. "I believe we were talking about a bank they were supposed to have robbed somewhere in California. Well, say that they took a pile of money—seventy thousand dollars out of it. But I say, Bob! That's awful bad printing. I don't know whether Silas can make out to read it or not."

"Then let him get somebody to help him," answered Bob. "I can't be expected to furnish him with the key, after going to so much trouble to write the letter."

"But if he can't read it, what use will it be to him?" asked Tom.

"Probably he's got friends who can spell it out for him, and I'm sure I don't care how much publicity he gives it. 'And there we took out seventy thousand dollars,'" said Bob. "Go on; what next? They went to Canada after that, didn't they? There is where all the crooks go these days."

"Put it down, anyway. 'So we went to Canady (be careful about the spelling) and staid there till the country got too hot for us.' That reads all right," said Tom, throwing himself into the big rocking-chair, and wondering, like the minister in the "One-Hoss Shay," what the Moses should come next. "Don't forget to say something about the 'hant' who guards the treasure in the cave."

"Can't you wait till I come to the cave?" replied Bob, who could not print the letter as fast as his friend could think up things to put into it. "I don't altogether approve of this ghost business, anyway. I am afraid it will scare the old fellow so badly that he will make no attempt to find the treasure that is concealed in the cave."

"Don't you worry about that," Tom replied. "All we've got to do is to word the letter so that he will believe the money is really there, and he will go after it, even if he knew that he would have to face all the ghosts that ever haunted the Summerdale hills; and their name is legion, if there is any faith to be put in the stories I have heard."

"I say, Tom," exclaimed Bob, throwing down his pen and settling-back in his chair, "wouldn't it be a joke if some of those same ghosts should take it into their heads to visit us during the winter? It must be lonely up there in the mountains, when the roads are blocked with drifts, and all communication with the outside world is cut off, and wouldn't we feel funny if we should hear something go this way some dark and stormy night—b-r-r-r?"

Here Bob uttered a hollow groan, drew his head down between his shoulders, and tried to shiver and look frightened.

"No doubt it would; but we shan't hear anything go this way—b-r-r-r," replied Tom, imitating Bob's groan as nearly as he could. "Now I think you had better go on with that letter, and I will draw the map that is to guide him in his search for the robbers' cave and plunder. We've wasted a good hour and a half already; and if we don't hurry up, we shan't be able to give him the letter to-day. Let me think a moment! There's a deep gorge about a quarter of a mile from Morgan's wood-pile, and I don't believe it has ever been explored. That would be a good place to put the cave, wouldn't it?"

Bob said he thought it would, and went on with his writing, while Tom hunted up a piece of paper and began drawing the map.

Bob pronounced it perfect when his friend presented it for his inspection, and indeed it ought to have been. There was no one in the neighborhood who was better acquainted with the hills than Silas Morgan, and if the map had guided him to a place that really had no existence, except in Tom's imagination, he would have known in a minute that somebody was trying to play a trick upon him.

The letter was finished at last, to the entire satisfaction of both the boys, and the next thing was to put it where the man for whom it was intended would be sure to find it.

Do you ask what it was that suggested to them the idea of making the shiftless and ignorant ferryman the victim of one of their practical jokes?

Simply an accident, coupled with the want of something to do, and their innate propensity to get fun out of everything that came in their way.

On the previous day they made it their business to stand guard over the English partridges and quails which Uncle Hallet had "turned down" in his wood-lot, and it so happened that they stopped to eat their lunch within a short distance of Silas Morgan's wood-pile, but out of sight of it. They heard the creaking of the ferryman's old wagon, as his aged and infirm beast pulled it laboriously up the steep mountain-side, and not long afterward the setters, which accompanied Silas, wherever he went, spied out their resting-place.

But the animals did not give tongue, as they would no doubt have done if the boys had been utter strangers to them. They thankfully ate the bits of cracker and broiled squirrel that were tossed to them, and then went back to wait for Silas.

"That man has no more right to those valuable dogs than I have," said Bob. "They're worth a hundred dollars apiece, and no one ever gave a guide that much money in return for a single day's woodcock shooting. Who is he talking to, I wonder?"

"To no one," answered Tom. "He likes to talk to a sensible man, and he likes to hear a sensible man talk; consequently, he has a good deal to say to Silas Morgan. That's the fellow he is talking to."

And so it proved. The ferryman was engaged in an animated conversation with the ferryman, asking and answering the questions himself, and so fully was his mind occupied with other matters, that it never occurred to him that possibly his words might be falling upon ears for which they were not intended.

Tom and his companion had no desire to play the part of eavesdroppers. They were not at all interested in what Silas was saying to himself—at least they thought so; but it turned out otherwise.

Having finished their lunch, they began making preparations to set out for home; but in the meantime Silas reached the wood-pile, and, leaning heavily upon his wagon, he gave utterance to his thoughts in much the same words as those we used at the beginning of this story.

"I just know that I wasn't born to do no such mean work as I've been called to do all my life," declared Silas, stooping over, and throwing the perspiration from his forehead with his bent finger. "I can't get my consent to slave and toil in this way much longer, while there are folks all around me who never do a hand's turn. They can loaf around and take their ease from morning till night, while I—wait till I tell you. Such things ain't right, and I won't stand it much longer. The other night I dreamed of that robber's cave, with piles of gold and greenbacks into it, and yesterday I read about the finding of that earthen crock that was plumb full of money; so't I know I shall be a rich man some day. 'Pears to me that day isn't so very far off, neither. If I should come up here some time and find a letter telling me where there was a robber's cave with stacks and piles of money in it, I shouldn't be at all astonished; would you?"

"Not in the least," whispered Bob, giving his friend a prod in the ribs with his elbow; whereupon Tom laid his finger by the side of his nose and winked first one eye and then the other, to show that he fully understood Bob.

"Stranger things than that have happened," continued Silas, in a voice that was plainly audible to the two boys behind the evergreens, "and I don't see why it can't happen to me as well as to anybody else. Wouldn't that be a joyful day to me, though? I'd bust up that flat the very first thing I did, and tell the fellers that tooted the horn that I was done being servant for them or anybody else. No, I wouldn't do that, either," added Silas, after reflecting a minute. "I'd give it to Dan and Joe to make a living with, and then I wouldn't have to spend any of my fortune on their grub and clothes."

"What a stingy old hulks he is!" whispered Bob, as the ferryman took a reluctant step toward the wood-pile. "I say, Tom, don't you think there is a robber's cave about here somewhere? I should think there ought to be, with so many ghosts hanging around. It don't look to me as though they could be here for nothing."

"That's what I think," replied Tom, in the same cautious whisper. "I shouldn't wonder a bit if there was a freebooter's stronghold somewhere in these mountains."

"With lots of money in it?" continued Bob.

"Piles of it," said Tom. "As much as there is in the treasury at Washington."

Bob turned toward his friend with a look of indignant astonishment on his face.

"And you knew it all the time, and never told Silas about it!" he exclaimed. "Can't you see how badly he wants it, and how confident he is that he is going to get it? You ought to have attended to it long ago."

"You're very right," said Tom, meekly. "Now I will tell you what I'll do: If you will print a letter—it must be printed, you know, for Silas can't read writing—telling how the money got into the cave in the first place, I'll draw a map that will aid him in finding it."

Bob said it was a bargain, and the two boys shook hands on it; after which they again turned their attention to the ferryman, who kept up his soliloquy while he was loading the wood on the wagon. The burden of it was that his lot in life was a very hard one, that he never worked except under protest, and that he firmly believed that the future had something better in store for him.

Tom and his companion went home, fully determined that if they lived to see the dawn of another day, Silas should find the wished-for letter in his wood-pile.

They took one night to "sleep on it," and make up their minds just what they wanted to say to him, and bright and early the next morning they went to work.

By their united efforts they finally produced the letter which we laid before the reader in the third chapter; but they were a long time about it. Every sentence and suggestion had to be weighed and discussed at length, and it was when Tom remarked that he would like to see the upshot of the whole matter, that a bright idea suddenly occurred to Bob.

"We can stay up there to-morrow, and see what he will do when he finds the letter," observed the latter, "but we can't run to the top of the Summerdale hills every day to watch him go after the money, can we? It's too far, and— Say, Tom, let's ask Uncle Hallet to make us his game-wardens."

"Oh, let's!" exclaimed Tom, who was always ready for anything that had a spice of novelty or adventure in it. "Of course, we shall have to live up there in the woods, the same as Mr. Warren's man does."

"To-be-sure. Then we shall be right on the ground, and it will be but little trouble for us to keep track of Morgan's movements. If he tries to find the cave, we may be on hand to give him a scare."

"Well, that's a black horse of another color," said Tom, looking down at the floor, in a deep study. "Silas Morgan never goes into the woods without his double-barrel for company, and he is so sure a shot that I don't think it would be quite safe for the spectre of the cave to materialize while he is around."

Bob hadn't thought of that before, nor did he stop to think of it now, because it was a matter that could be settled at some future time. It was enough for him to know that Tom was strongly in favor of the rest of his scheme, and the two posted off to find Uncle Hallet, and see what he thought about it.

The result of the conference they held with him, so far as it was reached that day, we have already chronicled. We must now hasten on and tell what happened in and around the Summerdale hills after Silas found and lost the letter, and Dan got hold it.

CHAPTER XI. THE PLOT SUCCEEDS.

Tom's map having been duly examined and approved, and Bob's letter read and commented upon, the latter folded them both up together and placed them in an envelope, which he sealed with a vigorous blow of his fist.

"I suppose it ought to have a stamp on it, in order to make it look ship-shape," said he, "but I haven't got two cents to waste in addition to the time and exhausting mental effort I have spent upon the production of this interesting and important communication. I ought to put a hint of its contents upon the envelope, I should think."

"By all means," answered Tom. "Print anything that occurs to you, so long as it will excite his curiosity and impel him to a further examination. How does this strike you: 'Notis to the lucky person in to whose han's this dockyment may hapen to fall.' That sounds all right, doesn't it? Well, put it down, and then add something about the 'hant' that watches over the cave."

For a few minutes Bob's pen moved rapidly, and at last he drew a long breath of relief and slammed the blotting-paper over what he had written.

"It's done, I'm glad to say, and the next time we find it necessary to communicate with Mr. Morgan, or with any other gentleman who has not gone deep enough into the arcana of letters to be able to read good, honest writing, we'll hire a cheap boy to do the printing for us. Now, what shall we take besides our lunch? I don't want to carry my breech-loader up to the top of the mountains for nothing. I know it weighs only seven and a quarter pounds, but I'll think it weighs a hundred before I get back."

"If you will sling your pocket-rifle case over your shoulder, I'll take my little tackle-box, and then we shall be fully equipped," replied Tom. "We'll be sure to get a young squirrel or two while we are going by the corn-field, and I know a stream in which there are still a few trout to be found."

Acting upon his friend's advice, Bob put the letter into his pocket, and picked up the neat leather case in which his little rifle reposed, while Tom seized his tackle-box and led the way to the kitchen.

A few minutes later they left the house, with a substantial lunch stowed away in a fish-basket which Tom carried under his arm, and bent their steps toward Silas Morgan's wood-pile, where they arrived after an hour's fatiguing walk up the mountain.

The first thing in order was a reconnaissance in force, followed by a careful inspection of the ground, both of which satisfied them that they had reached the spot in ample time to carry out all the details of their scheme. The wheel-marks in the ground were not fresh, and neither were the footprints, and this proved that the ferryman had not yet been up after his daily load of wood.

"He is later than usual," said Bob. "I hope nothing has happened to keep him away, for I wouldn't miss being around when he gets the letter for anything. It will be as good as a circus."

"There he comes now!" exclaimed Tom, as a series of dismal wails arose from the valley below. "Don't you hear the creaking of his wagon? Shove the letter into the end of this stick, and then we'll dig out for the place where we ate lunch yesterday. We can hear and see everything from there."

Bob hastily complied with his friend's suggestion, inserting the letter into a crack in a protruding stick in so conspicuous a position that Silas would be sure to see it, if he made any use whatever of his eyes, and then the two boys betook themselves to their hiding-place behind the evergreens.

In due time the ferryman came in sight. He was clinging with both hands to the hind end of the wagon, and if he had let go his hold he would, beyond a doubt, have rolled clear back to the bottom of the hill, not being possessed of sufficient life and energy to stop himself.

Whenever the horse halted for a short rest, which he did as often as the idea occurred to him, Silas raised no objections, but leaned heavily upon the wood-rack and rested, too, talking earnestly to himself all the while.

He was so long in reaching the wood-pile that the boys became very impatient; but when he got there and found the letter, the fright and excitement he exhibited, and the extraordinary contortions he went through, amply repaid them for their long waiting.

Bob's prediction, that "it would be as good as a circus," was abundantly verified. They observed every move he made, and heard every word he said. They were especially delighted to see him climb the wood-pile, and reach over and take possession of the letter; and when he snatched up the knotted reins and fell upon the horse with his hickory, because the animal would not move in obedience to his whispered commands, Bob caught Tom around the neck with both arms, and the two rolled on the ground convulsed with merriment.

When they recovered themselves sufficiently to get up and look through the evergreens again, they saw Silas disappearing around the first turn in the road; but he was in sight long enough for them to take note of the fact that he was stepping out at a much livelier rate than they had seen him accomplish for many a day. When the trees hid him from view, Tom and Bob sat down on the ground and looked at each other.

"Well," said the former, wiping the tears from his eyes, "so far so good. Now, what comes next?"

"Nothing more of this sort to-day; at least I hope not," answered Bob. "I couldn't stand another such a laughing spell right away, unless I could give full vent to my feelings. I thought I should split when I heard Silas say that he didn't know whether or not he could get his consent to touch that letter."

Silas being safely out of hearing by this time, there was no longer any reason why Bob should restrain his risibilities, and he gave way to a hearty peal of laughter, in which Tom joined with much gusto.

"It was when he went through his antics on top of the wood-pile that I came the nearest losing control of myself," said the latter, as soon as he could speak. "I didn't suppose that there was so much ignorance and superstition in this whole country as that man has given us proof of this day."

And neither did Tom imagine that while he and Bob were writing that letter, "just for the fun of the thing," they were setting in motion a series of events which were destined to create the greatest excitement far and near, and to come within a hair's-breadth of ending in something very like a tragedy.

It was a long time before the boys had their laugh out. Tom, who was an incomparable mimic, went through the whole performance again, for his own delectation as well as for Bob's benefit, reaching for invisible letters, and climbing imaginary wood-piles, and so perfectly did he imitate the ferryman's actions, and even the tones of his voice, that Bob at last jumped to his feet, slung his rifle over his shoulder, and hastened away, declaring that he could not stand it any longer.

The first thing the two friends did, after they became sobered down so that they could do anything, was to retrace their steps to the corn-field, where they hoped to secure an acceptable addition to the lunch that was in Tom's creel.

Nor were they disappointed; the game they sought was out in full force; Bob's diminutive rifle spoke twice in quick succession, and two young squirrels, after being neatly dressed and wrapped in buttered tissue-paper, were placed in the basket with the lunch.

Then the boys went in quest of the trout stream of which Tom had spoken. When Bob got down to it, and saw what a place it was in, he did not wonder that there were still a few fish to be found in it. On the contrary, he wondered if there had ever been any taken out of it. He had never seen an angler, no matter how enthusiastic and long-winded he might be, who would willingly stumble through five miles of trackless woods, climb over as many miles of tangled wind-fall, and scramble down the almost perpendicular side of that deep gorge, for the sake of catching a few trout, and he did not hesitate to tell Tom so.

"Wait till you see the beauty I am going to snatch out from under that log in less than a minute after I drop in my hook," said the latter, who carried his open knife in his hand, and was looking about among the bushes for a pole to take the place of the split bamboo he had left at home. "But you needn't grumble, young man. You may see the day when you will be willing to tramp farther than this to have the pleasure of depositing a single trout in your creel."

"When things get as bad as that I won't go trout-fishing," said Bob, in reply. "I'll take it out on black bass in the lake. Besides, these trout are not at all high-toned. They don't know enough to take a fly, and there's no fun in fishing with any other bait."

"We're not looking for fun now; we're after our dinner," answered Tom, who, having found a pole to suit him, was kicking the bark off a decayed log in search of a grub to put on his hook. "Would it inconvenience you to stir around and get a fire going? You might as well have your scales ready, too; there's a trout under that log that weighs about— There he is!"

Sure enough, there he was.

While Tom was speaking he dropped his hook into the water, and before the white grub on it had sunk out of sight, it was seized by a monster trout, which turned and started for the bottom with it, only to find himself yanked unceremoniously out of his native element, and by a dexterous movement of his captor's wrist, landed at Bob's feet on the opposite bank.

"I haven't elbow-room for any display of science in handling fish," said Tom, as his companion unhooked the prize and quieted his struggles by a blow on the head with the handle of his heavy knife. "Main strength and awkwardness are what do the business in these tangled thickets. What do the scales say in regard to his weight?"

"A pound and nine ounces," replied Bob. "Now suppose you hand over that pole and see if I can catch one to match him."

Tom, who was quite willing to comply, jumped across the brook and set to work to kindle a fire and get the dinner going, while Bob took the rod and threaded his way through the thick bushes toward another promising hole which his friend told him of, farther up the stream.

He was not gone more than twenty minutes, and when he came back he brought with him three trout, one of which was larger and heavier than Tom's.

Bob could easily have taken more but did not do it, because he knew that he and Tom could not dispose of them. He knew, too, that they would be a drug in the home market, Uncle Hallet having often declared that he had eaten so many trout since Bob came to his house that it was all he could do to keep from jumping into every puddle of water he saw.

The boys were adepts at forest cookery, and hungry enough to do full justice to their dinner.

When the meal was over, the only dish they had to wash was the small tin basin in which their tea was made, the squirrels and trout having been broiled over the coals on three-pronged sticks cut from the neighboring bushes.

After an hour's rest they put out the fire by drenching it with water, which they dipped from the brook with their drinking-cups.

Bob often paused in his work to look up at the high bank above, which was so steep that the top seemed to hang over the bed of the stream, and finally he declared that it would take so much of his breath and strength to get up there that he wouldn't have any left to carry him over the five miles of wind-fall that lay between the gorge and Silas Morgan's wood-pile.

"Well, then, we'll follow the brook," said Tom. "It will take us to the lake, if we stick to it long enough, or we can turn out of the gorge when we reach the place where our robber's cave is supposed to be located. What kind of traveling we shall find I don't know, for I have never been down this gulf; but I do know that we shall have farther to walk than if we go back the way we came."

Bob at once declared his preference for the "water route," reminding his companion that the longest way around is often the shortest way home.

He felt relieved after that, for he dreaded the almost impassable wind-fall over which his tireless friend had led him a few hours before; but whether or not it was worse than some things that happened as the result of his decision, and which he was destined to encounter before the winter was over remains to be seen.

CHAPTER XII. A MYSTERY.

The traveling in the gorge was quite as difficult as the two friends expected to find it. The bushes on each side were so thick that they could not walk on the bank, and the bed of the stream was covered with rocks and boulders, over which they slipped and stumbled at every step.

Now and then the way was obstructed by deep, dark pools which would have gladdened the eye of an angler, for it is in such places that the "sockdolagers" of the brook abide. But Tom and his companion looked upon them as so many obstacles that were to be overcome with as little delay as possible.

They floundered through them without stopping to see how deep they were, and before they had left their camp half a mile behind, their high rubber boots were full of water.

The gorge was beginning to grow dark when Tom, after taking a survey of the bank over his head, announced that they were just about opposite Silas Morgan's wood-pile, and that it was time for them to find a place to climb out.

"I am overjoyed to hear it," said Bob, seating himself on the nearest boulder. "But it's going to be hard work to get up there, the first thing you know, because we've got several pounds more weight to carry than we had when we started. This is worse than the windfall."

While Bob was resting, Tom walked slowly down the gorge, hoping to find a spot where the bushes were not so thick, and the bank easy of ascent; but before he had gone a dozen yards, his footsteps were arrested by an occurrence that was as startling as it was unexpected.

The thicket in front of him was suddenly and violently agitated, and an instant afterward there arose from it the most blood-curdling sound the boys had ever heard. An Indian war-whoop could not compare with it—they were certain of that. It was not a shriek, a laugh or a groan, but it was a combination of all three; and it was so loud and penetrating that the echoes caught it up and repeated it, until the hideous sound seemed to fill the air all around them.

Tom came to a sudden standstill, and the face he turned toward his companion was as white as a sheet.

Bob was frightened, too, but he retained his wits and his power of action, and his first thought was to put a safe distance between himself and the thing, whatever it was, that could make a noise like that.

Without saying a word he arose from his seat, dived into the bushes and began scrambling up the bank. How he got to the top he never knew (he afterward affirmed that in some places the bank was as straight up and down as the side of a house), but he reached it in an incredibly short space of time, and turned about to find Tom close at his heels.

"What in the name of sense and Tom Walker was it?" panted Bob, pulling out his handkerchief and mopping his forehead, on which the perspiration stood in great beads.

"I give it up," gasped Tom. "It must be something awful, if one may judge by the screeching it is able to do. I heard a couple of laughing hyenas give a solo and chorus in a menagerie once, and I thought I should never get the sound out of my ears; but that thing in the gulf can beat them out of sight. I'm going home now, but I'll come up here to-morrow with Bugle and Uncle Hallet's Winchester, and if I can make the dog drive him out of the bushes so that I can get a fair sight at him, I'll pump him so full of holes that he'll never make any more of that noise."

Tom at once drew a bee line for his uncle's house, and Bob fell in behind him. When they reached the wood-pile, he proposed that they should sit down and rest and compare notes. He was still quite nervous and uneasy, while Bob, who had had leisure to look at the matter in all its bearings, was as serene and unruffled as usual.

"Well, what do you think of it by this time?" inquired the latter.

"I don't think anything about it," replied Tom; "it is quite beyond me. But this much I know: That thing has got to be 'neutralized' before I will consent to come up here and live as Uncle Hallet's game-warden."

"Aha!" exclaimed Bob, with a laugh, "didn't you assure me that we wouldn't hear anything go b-r-r-r?"

"Yes, and I'll stick to it; but there's something in these mountains that I don't want to hear screaming around our cabin this winter, now I tell you. What kind of a beast do you think it was, anyway? You heard a panther screech while you were hunting in Michigan last winter. Did he make a noise like that?"

"No," answered Bob; "it wasn't a beast, either."

"What makes you say that?"

"I have two very good reasons. In the first place, if there are any animals in these mountains that are more to be feared than the wolves, they have found hiding-places so secure that the hunters have not been able to discover them for ten years and better. In the next place, if that thing in the gulf is a beast of prey, he would not have given us notice of his presence. He would have waited till we came close to the bushes so that he could jump out and grab one of us."

"That's so," said Tom. "Well, go on; what was it?"

"You placed our robbers' cave down there, didn't you?"

"Oh, get out!" exclaimed Tom; "I'm in no humor for nonsense. I was badly frightened, and I haven't got over it yet."

"Neither have I. I am in dead earnest. There's somebody down there in the gulf, and he took that way to let us know that he didn't want us to come any nearer to him."

"It was Silas Morgan, for a million dollars!" exclaimed Tom, who needed no more words to convince him that his friend's reasoning was correct. "It's perfectly clear to me now. He didn't waste any time in going after that money, did he?"

"Quite the contrary. He has been so very quick about it, that I'm inclined to believe it wasn't Silas at all; but if it was he, why is he camping there?"

"Camping?" repeated Tom.

"Yes. Just before that horrid shriek came out of the bushes, I thought I could smell burning wood; but I didn't have time to call your attention to it."

"Perhaps the mountain is on fire somewhere."

"Oh, I guess not. If that was the case, we'd smell the smoke now, wouldn't we?"

"That's so," said Tom, again. "Well, who's down there?"

"I'm sure I don't know; but I am satisfied that it is some one who has reasons for keeping himself hidden from the world. Now, what's to be done about it?"

"I don't see that we are obliged to do anything, unless we want to make ourselves a laughing stock for the whole country," replied Tom, who had had time to form some ideas of his own. "I couldn't be hired to tell Uncle Hallet of it, because he would ask, right away, 'Why didn't you go ahead and find out what it was that frightened you? You are pretty fellows to talk about living up there alone in the woods this winter, are you not?' And he'd never leave off poking fun at us. No doubt there is a party of guests from the hotel down there, and one of them yelled at us just for the fun of seeing us scramble up the bank. I only wish they might stay there long enough to play the same game on Silas Morgan when he comes after the money that is hidden in the cave."

The two friends spent half an hour or more in comparing notes after this fashion, but they did not succeed in wholly clearing up the mystery. They both agreed that it was a man, and not a savage beast of prey, that was hidden in the gulf; but who the man was, where he came from, and what he was doing there, were other and deeper questions, which probably never would be answered.

"I'll tell you what's a fact, Bob," said Tom, as he arose from the ground and led the way down a well-beaten cow-path that ran toward his uncle's barn, "We are not the only fellows in the world who like to play tricks upon others, and I'll venture to say that there is some one in the gorge at this minute who is laughing at us as heartily as we laughed at Silas Morgan when he found the letter that we put in his wood-pile. The guests at the hotel come up here to have fun, and they don't care much how they get it."

"Perhaps you're right," replied Bob, who nevertheless still held to the belief that there was some one in the gorge who was hiding there because he dared not show himself among his fellow-men. "But if I were sure of it, I should be very much ashamed of myself and you, too. However, I don't see how we are to get at the bottom of the matter, unless we go back and interview the party in the gulf; and I can't say that I am anxious to do that."

There was still another point on which the boys fully agreed, and that was that they would not say a word to Uncle Hallet about it; but the latter heard of it, all the same, and it turned out that Tom was wide of the mark when he insisted that some one had played a joke upon himself and his companion.

The boys reached home just at supper-time, and found that Uncle Hallet had returned from Bellville with good news for them. He had seen Bob's father, and the latter, after declaring that it was one of the wildest things he had ever heard of, and wondering what foolish notion those two boys would get into their heads next, finally decided that since Tom had made up his mind to live in the woods during the winter, Bob might stay and keep him company.

"He desired me to tell you that he shall expect to hear a good account of you, both as student and game-warden," said Uncle Hallet, shaking his finger at Bob. "If you don't keep up with your class, or if you neglect your business and allow some pot-hunter to kill off all my English birds, so that there won't be any left for your father to shoot when I invite him up here, he will be sorry that he didn't keep you in school. What's the matter with you two anyway?" suddenly demanded Uncle Hallet, who had a faint suspicion that the boys were not as highly elated as they ought to have been. "This morning you were fairly carried away with this new idea of yours, and now you don't seem to say anything. Have you thought better of it already?"

The boys hastened to assure Uncle Hallet that they had not—that they were just as eager to assume the duties of game-wardens as they had ever been, and that that was the last night they expected to pass under his roof for eight long months.

It was all true, too; but each of them made a mental reservation. If the man in the gulf was a fugitive from justice, as Bob thought he was, he might prove to be a very unpleasant fellow to have around, and until he had been "neutralized," as Tom expressed it, they could not hope to enjoy themselves.

They did not want to enter upon their duties feeling that there was a portion of Mr. Hallet's preserves from which they were shut off by the presence of one who had no business there.

"He suspects something," whispered Tom, as he and his friend arose from the supper-table and made their way to their rooms. "Now I'll just tell you what's a fact. I am going wherever I please in my uncle's woods, and any one who tries to turn me back will get himself into trouble."

"I am with you," was Bob's reply. "If that howling dervish has settled down there for the winter, how shall we get rid of him?"

Tom couldn't answer that question, so he said that perhaps they had better sleep on it, and that was what they decided to do.

CHAPTER XIII. DAN IS SCARED.

When Mr. Warren's newly-appointed game-warden turned away from Dan and went on down the road to meet his mother, he left behind him one of the maddest boys that had ever been seen in that part of the country.

In spite of all he had said to the contrary, Dan had no intention of asking Mr. Hallet to employ him to watch his birds and keep trespassers out of his wood-lot, for he knew very well that if he proffered such a request he would be met by a prompt and emphatic refusal.

Mr. Hallet was too well acquainted with his poaching propensities to give his imported game into his keeping, and Dan was painfully aware of the fact.

What he wanted more than anything else was that his brother should accept him as a partner, so that he could handle half the earnings, while Joe did all the work and shouldered all the responsibility; that was the plain English of it. But Joe was resolved to paddle his own canoe, and more than that, he had threatened to call upon a powerful friend to make Dan behave himself, if he didn't see fit to do it of his own free will.

"I've got be mighty sly about what I do," thought Dan, resting his elbows on his knees and looking down at the ground, after kicking Bony out of his way. "Don't it beat you when you think of the luck that comes to some fellers, while others, who are just as good as they be, and who work just as hard, can't make things go right no way they can fix it? I tell you it bangs me. I ought to have help to drive that Joe of our'n out of them woods, for, to tell you what's the gospel truth, I don't quite like the idee of facing him alone. I can't fight agin him and pap, with old man Warren throwed in."

While Dan was talking to himself in this way, he stretched his leg out before him and drew from his pocket the letter he had found in front of the door of the wood-shed. He little dreamed what an astounding revelation it contained. He had not the slightest idea where it came from, and neither could he have told why he picked it up.

He proceeded to examine it now, simply because he had nothing else to occupy his mind, except his many and bitter disappointments, and he had already expressed himself very feelingly in regard to them.

With great deliberation Dan spread the letter upon his knee, and, with a caution which had become habitual to him, looked up and down the road to make sure that there was no one in sight. Then he addressed himself to the task of reading the "notis" that was scrawled upon the envelope; but no sooner had he, with infinite difficulty, spelled out all the words in it, than the letter fell from his nerveless fingers, and Dan jumped to his feet and whooped and yelled like a wild Indian.

"Now don't it bang you what mean luck some fellers do have? Here's a—"

Dan checked himself very suddenly when he became aware that he was shouting out these words with all the power of his lungs. Filled with apprehension he looked up and down the road again, but as there was no one in sight, he resumed his seat and went on with his soliloquy; but this time he spoke in a much lower tone of voice.

"There's a fortune up there in the mounting, as much as two or three hundred dollars mebbe, but I dassent go after it on account of the hant that's up there," said Dan, to himself. "I've heared 'em say that them hants cuts up powerful bad when anybody comes fooling around where they be, and it ain't no use to think of driving them away, 'cause bullets will go through 'em as slick as you please and never hurt 'em at all. How come this dockyment in front of the wood-shed, do you reckon?"

Dan was greatly confused and excited, and it was a long time before he could control himself sufficiently to pick up the envelope, take out the inclosure and read it through to the end—or, to be more exact, nearly to the end; for, as we shall presently see, Dan never had a chance to read the whole of it. He kept up a running fire of comments as he went along, and to have heard him, one would suppose that he had long been looking for something of this sort.

That was hardly to be wondered at, for he had often heard his father indulge in the most extravagant speculations concerning the future, and Dan certainly had as good a right to waste his time in that way as Silas had.

But when he came to read about the "hant" which bothered the writer so persistently that he was obliged to jump into the lake in order to get rid of him, Dan could stand it no longer. He got upon his feet, at the same time returning the letter to the envelope and making a blind shove with it at his pocket, and drew a bee-line for home.

He was so badly frightened that he could not run, and he was afraid to look behind him. He glided over the ground with long, noiseless footsteps, his lank body bent nearly half double, and his wild-looking eyes roving from thicket to thicket on each side of the road in front of him.

Presently the climax came. A squirrel, detecting his approach, sought to escape observation by jumping from one tree to another, and he made a great commotion among the light branches as he did so. The noise was too much for Dan's overtaxed nerves.

"It's the hant, as sure as I'm a foot high," said he, in a frightened whisper. "He can't pester t'other feller any more, 'cause he's gone and drownded himself in the lake; but he's going to foller whoever has got the letter telling where the fortune is, and that's me. I wonder could I out-run him?"

Dan thought this a good idea, and he lost not a moment in acting upon it. He was noted far and near for his lightness of foot, but no one in the Summerdale hills had ever seen him run as he ran that day. He hardly seemed to touch the ground; and the farther he went the faster he went, because his increasing fear lent him wings. He was so hopelessly stampeded that if the road had been crowded with teams or people he would not have seen one of them. He did not slacken his pace until he reached the wood-shed, and then he came to an abrupt halt and looked behind him. There was no one in the road over which he had passed in his headlong flight, and the woods were silent.

"Well, I done it, didn't I?" exclaimed Dan, drawing a long breath of relief, and thrusting his hand into the pocket in which he thought he had put the letter. "It ain't no use for anything that gets around on two legs to think of follering me when I turn on the steam. Now, then, where's that there—"

"That there what? And who's been a-follering of you?" demanded a familiar voice, almost at his elbow.

Dan was frightened again. He looked up, and there stood his father, who had been keeping up a persistent but of course fruitless search for the letter ever since Dan went away.

One glance at his angry face was a revelation to the boy. He knew now that Silas had lost the letter where he found it. Dan would have been glad to take it out and hand it over to him—he didn't want anything more to do with it after the experience he had already had with the "hant"—but he found, to his unbounded amazement and alarm, that he could not do it. He had dropped the letter somewhere along the road.

"Who's been a-follering of you? and what have you lost?" repeated Silas, who began to have a faint idea that he understood the situation.

"There was a hant follering of me," replied Dan, as soon as he could speak. "He was coming for me, 'cause I could hear him slamming through the bushes; but I can run faster'n him, else I wouldn't be here now."

"You can't bamboozle your pap with no tale about a hant, for I don't believe in such things," declared Silas, but his face told a different story. He looked fully as wild as Dan did, and he was almost as badly frightened. "Why don't you come to the p'int, and tell me that you have lost the letter that was left in my wood-pile last winter, and which I never seen till this morning? If you will tell me the truth about it, I will tell you something that will make your eyes stick out as big as your fist."

"And won't you larrup me for losing of it?" asked Dan, who saw very plainly that it was useless for him to deny that he had once had the letter in his possession.

"No, I won't do nothing to you; honor bright. Did you read what was into it?"

"Not all of it. I didn't have time, on account of that hant, who rattled the bushes behind me. When I heared that, I just shoved the letter into my pocket and skipped out," replied Dan, who could not for the life of him tell a thing just as it happened. "But it bangs me where that letter is now, 'cause I ain't got it."

Dan expected that his father would go into an awful rage when he heard this, and held himself in readiness to take to his heels at the very first sign of a hostile demonstration; consequently he was very much surprised to hear Silas say, without the least show of anger:

"It don't much matter, 'cause I had a chance to read all that was into the letter, and take a good look at the map that come with it. I know right where to look for that robbers' cave, but I shan't go down that there rope, I bet you, for I don't want to dump myself into the presence of that hant before I have a look at him. We'll go in at the mouth of the gulf, and work our way up till we come to the hiding-place of the money."

"We?" echoed Dan.

"Yes, me and you."

"Not much we won't," declared Dan, throwing all the emphasis he could into his words.

"What for?" demanded Silas.

"'Cause why. It's enough for me, to hear hants a chasing of me. I ain't got no call to go where they be, so't I can see 'em. I wouldn't go up to that there cave if I knowed there was a thousand dollars into it."

"A thousand dollars!" repeated Silas. "Didn't you read in the letter about the grip-sack with a false bottom to it?"

"I don't reckon I did," answered Dan, after thinking a moment. "The hant scared me away before I got that far."

"Well, there's a grip-sack there," continued Silas, "and there's twelve thousand dollars in bills and three hundred dollars in gold into it. I was calkerlating all along that me and you would go snucks on it. Now, will you hand over that letter, so't I can take another look at the map and make sure that I know where the cave is?"

"Twelve thousand dollars in bills and three hundred more dollars in gold!" gasped Dan, who could hardly believe his ears. "Pap, I would give you the letter in a minute, but it's the gospel truth that I ain't got it."

And to prove his words, Dan turned all his pockets inside out, to show that they were empty.

"Then I reckon we'll have to go back along the road and look for it," said Silas, desperately. "That's a power of money, more'n I ever thought to have in my family, and sposen somebody should come along and find that there letter, and go up to the cave and steal it away from us? Just think of that, Dannie!"

Dan did think of it, and it was the only thing that kept him from beating a hasty retreat when his father spoke of going back to look for the letter.

CHAPTER XIV. THE "HANT."

"Now, let me tell you what's a fact," said Dan, after he had taken a few minutes in which to consider his father's proposition. "I don't reckon it will be any use for us to go back and try to find that there letter. I'll bet anything that the hant has found it and carried it miles away before this time."

"Dannie, what's the use of talking that way?" exclaimed Silas, impatiently, "Don't you know that hants can't tote nothing away, 'cause they're sperits? All they can do is to jump up in front of a feller and frighten him; but they can't do no harm to you. We'll take our guns along, and if he's fool enough to show himself we'll pepper him good fashion."

"And never hurt him at all," said Dan. "He'll be just as sassy with his hide full of bird-shot as he was before. Now, pap, you wait and see if I ain't right."

Silas did not pay much attention to these words of warning, but they were afterward recalled to his mind in a manner that was most unexpected and startling. What he was thinking of just now was the letter. He was very anxious to find it, for he was afraid that it might fall into the hands of some one who would use it to his injury. When he turned about and led the way into the cabin, Dan followed him with reluctant steps.

"You needn't be no ways skeery about going up the road in broad daylight," said Silas, encouragingly. "It ain't likely that that there hant will go away from the cave and roam around the country, scaring folks, for the fun of the thing. He ain't out there in the woods, and you never heard him."

"I did, for a fact," protested Dan.

"I don't believe it, all the same," answered Silas, as he took down his heavy double-barrel and measured the loads in it with the ramrod. "He's come back to the cave to watch them five hundred pounds of money, and see that nobody don't carry 'em away; and he'll never leave there."

"Then how are we going to get that fortune?" inquired Dan.

"We'll just walk right in and take it without saying a word to him," said Silas boldly. "I've heard my father tell that them hants can't harm you if you ain't afraid of 'em."

"Well, I'll tell you one thing, and that ain't two," said Dan, as he shouldered his gun and followed his father from the cabin. "I ain't a going to run no risk. I'll help you find the cave, but I won't go into it, I bet you. I don't want to hear something screeching at me through the dark, and see great eyes of fire—"

"Don't Dannie!" exclaimed Silas, shivering all over, as if some one had drawn an icicle along his back.

"Well, that's the way them hants do, ain't it?" asked the boy. "I'd as soon be knocked in the head with a club as to have something scare me to death. Come on, if you're coming. I ain't going ahead, and that's all there is about it."

The two brave fellows were by this time fairly in the road, and Silas was prudently slackening his pace, to allow Dan to get in advance of him.

The latter's description of the greeting that would be extended to them by the guardian spectre, when they went into the cave after the money that was supposed to be concealed there, had taken all his courage away from him, and, if there was any danger ahead, Silas did not want to be the first to meet it.

Dan, who was quick to notice this, also slackened his own pace, and the two walked slower and slower, until they came to a dead stop.

"I see what you're up to, old man," said Dan, shaking his clenched hand at his sire, "and you might as well know, first as last, that you can't play no such trick onto me. I'll stick close to you, and face the music as long as you do; but you shan't shove me in front of you not one inch."

It was no use for Silas to protest that he had no intention of doing anything of the kind, for the case was too clear against him; so he pushed ahead again, and Dan, true to his promise, kept close at his side. They walked on for a quarter of a mile or more, holding their guns in readiness for instant use, and never saying a word to each other, and at last the deep silence that brooded over the surrounding woods became too much for the ferryman's nerves. He broke it by saying, in a suppressed whisper:

"You read far enough in that letter to know that there's five hundred pounds of money into that there cave, didn't you? That's as much as me and you both can pack away on our backs in one trip, and it beats me how that feller could have toted it so far. Now where be we going to hide it? That's what's been a bothering of me. Can't you think up some good—Laws a massy! what's the matter of you?" exclaimed Silas; for Dan suddenly seized his father's arm with a grip that made him wonder.

They were just going around the first turn in the road. Instead of replying to his father's question in words, Dan raised his hand and pointed silently toward the bushes a short distance away.

Silas looked, and was just in time to catch a glimpse of something which got out of the range of his vision so quickly that he could not tell what it was. He turned to Dan for an explanation.

"It's the hant," whispered the latter. "I know it is, for didn't he go into them evergreens without making the least stir among the branches?"

Silas couldn't say whether he did or not, and neither did he stop to argue the matter. Forgetting that he had brought his double-barrel with him on purpose to "pepper" the ghost, in case he saw fit to make himself visible, Silas faced about and took to his heels; but before he had taken half a dozen steps, Dan flew past him as if he had been standing still.

His father made a desperate effort to catch him as he went by, but Dan sprang out of his reach and bounded onward with increased speed, never stopping to take breath or to look behind him, until he found himself safe in the cabin. When his father stepped across the threshold, a few minutes later, Dan made all haste to close and lock the door.

"You're a purty son, you be, to run off and leave your poor old pap to face the danger alone," said the ferryman, sinking into the nearest chair and fairly gasping for breath. "I won't give you none of my fortune when I get it, just to pay you for that mean piece of business."

"I don't care," answered Dan, doggedly. "You run first, and I wasn't going to stay behind with that thing there in the bushes. I reckon you're willing to believe now that he was a chasing of me a while ago, ain't you? I tell you, pap, he follers the letter, and he'll never leave off pestering the man that's got it. I'm glad it's lost."

"So be I," said Silas, who had not thought of this before. "He bothered his pardner, who was the only one who knew that there was a fortune in the cave, and his pardner had to jump into the lake to get shet of him. It stands to reason, then, that he'll show himself to every one who finds out about that money. I 'most wish that that letter hadn't been put in my wood-pile, 'cause I can't rest easy while that hant is loafing about here."

"Now I'll tell you this for a fact," added Dan. "You'd best let the whole thing drop right where it is. The hant will be sure to foller the money wherever it goes, and as often as you step out to your hiding-place to get a dollar or two, you will find him there waiting for you."

"Dannie," said Silas, slowly, "I'll bet you have hit centre the first time trying. But it 'pears to me that if he wanted to keep the secret of that cave hid from everybody, he ought by rights to have scared me away when he saw me taking the letter out of my wood-pile."

"You can't never get the money, and that's all there is about it," said Dan, confidently.

"Yes, we can!" exclaimed Silas, jumping up to put his gun back in its place. "I've just thought of something, and I want you to tell me if you don't think it about the cutest trick that was ever played on a hant or anything else. He'll stay around where that letter is till some one finds it, won't he?"

Dan thought it very likely.

"Then he'll go with the feller, to keep track of the letter, won't he?"

Dan was sure he would.

"And if it ain't found right away, he'll hang around so's to keep an eye on it and see where it goes to. Don't you think he will?"

Dan replied that he did.

"Well, now, that's what I am going to work on," continued Silas, gleefully. "The hant is out of the cave now—we're sure of that, for we both seen him when he went into them bushes—and we must work things so's to keep him out."

"You keep saying 'we' all the time," interrupted Dan, "and I tell you, once for all, that I ain't going to have nothing to do with it. You can have all the money, for I won't go nigh the cave."

"I don't ask you to," Silas hastened to assure him. "That's the trick I was telling you about. All I want you to do is to walk up and down the road to-morrow—it's getting too late to do anything to-day—and make the hant believe that you're looking for the letter you lost."

"Well, I won't do it," said Dan, promptly.

"That'll keep him away from the cave," continued the ferryman, paying no attention to the interruption, "and while he is watching you, I'll slip up and gobble that fortune without asking any other help from you. And I'll give you half, the minute I get my hands on to it—the very minute."

"Well, I won't do it," said Dan, again. "Why don't you stay and watch the hant, and let me go after the money?"

This proposition almost took the ferryman's breath away. He wouldn't have agreed to it if the robber's treasure had been twice twelve thousand dollars.

"Why, you don't know where the cave is," he managed to articulate.

"No more do you," retorted Dan.

"Yes, I do, 'cause I looked at the map. I can go right to it on the darkest of nights."

"Here comes mam and that Joe of our'n, and so you'd best hush up," said Dan, in a hurried whisper. "I ain't a going to play 'Hi-spy' all alone with that there hant, and that's all there is about it. But I do hate to give up my good clothes, and breech-loader and j'inted fish-pole," he added, after thinking a moment, "and mebbe I'll go with you up to the cave to-morrow, and make him keep his distance while you go in and bring out the money. Who knows but what the smell of powder and the whistle of shot about his ears will scare him so't he will go away and never come back?"

Silas caught the idea at once, and felt greatly encouraged by it; but before he could say anything the door, which Dan had unlocked while he was talking, was thrown open, and Mrs. Morgan and Joe came in.

The latter looked cheerful and happy, but it was plain that his mother was worried and anxious. She knew that there would be trouble in that house in just one month from that day.

CHAPTER XV. JOE'S NEW HOME.

The ferryman and his family always arose at an early hour, and it was probably more from force of habit than for any other reason, for Joe and his mother were the only ones who did any work. The former kindled the fire and laid the table, while Dan and his father loafed around and watched them.

But on the morning following the events we have recorded in the last chapter, these two worthies had something to talk about, so they went out and sat under a tree on the bank of the river, and far enough away from the cabin to escape all danger of being overheard.

Joe and his mother, however, did not bother their heads about them, for they had their own affairs to talk over.

Joe was to enter upon his duties as game-warden that very day. Of course he was impatient to see his new home, and to get his hands upon some of those books that Mr. Warren had promised to lend him; but, above all, he was anxious to earn something for his mother. She needed a good long rest, and Joe was rejoiced to know that he would soon be in a position to give it to her.

A night's refreshing sleep had an astonishing effect upon Dan and his father. They did not talk or act much like the frightened man and boy we saw running along the road a few hours before. They were as brave as lions. Twelve thousand dollars in bills and three hundred dollars in gold were well worth working for, and they repeatedly assured each other that they were willing to face any danger in order to obtain them for their own.

But there was one thing that Dan held to in spite of all the appeals and arguments that his father could bring to bear upon him, and that was, that the hant must be met and overcome, or outwitted, as circumstances might seem to require, by their united forces. He wasn't going philandering away in one direction, while his father went on a wild-goose chase in another, because that wasn't the way to fight ghosts.

"Then we'll stick together," said Silas, at length. "We'll hang around the house till that Joe of our'n goes away, and then we'll fire off our guns and load 'em up with heavier charges of shot, so't we'll be ready for anything that comes along."

"I did want powerful bad to live up there in the woods this winter with that Joe," said Dan, with something like a sigh of regret. "What he's going to get he's sure of, but we ain't. I am going into this thing to win, I tell you," he added, sticking out his lips and calling a very reckless and determined look to his face. "I ain't a-going to let no little brother of mine beat me. When I get started for that there money, I'm going to have it before I turn back."

"That's the way to talk," said Silas, approvingly.

"Joe's going to give all he earns to mam, but I ain't," continued Dan. "I am going to spend all my six thousand dollars for myself. I'm going to have good clothes, and a breech-loading bird gun, and a j'inted fishing-pole, and by this time next summer I'll be so much of a gentleman that the folks who come here to hunt and fish will be glad to hire me for a guide, 'cause they won't know that I am Dan Morgan at all. They'll take me for somebody else."

"Course they will!" exclaimed Silas, bringing his heavy hand down upon Dan's shoulder with such force that the boy shook all over. "Just bear that in mind, son, when we find the cave. I'm 'most certain that the hant won't show himself to us, for he'll be down the road somewhere, looking for the letter you lost yesterday; but if he does come out, you just say, 'six thousand dollars' to yourself, and walk right into him with the bird-shot that's in your gun."

"And what'll you be doing?" queried Dan.

"Oh, I'll be there, and I'll shoot, too," replied Silas; and a stranger would have thought that he was a man who never got frightened at anything.

Just then Joe came to the door of the cabin and shouted, "Breakfast!" and that put a stop to the conversation. There was little said while they were seated at the table, for they were all busy with their own thoughts. Silas and Dan wished from the bottom of their hearts that the day was over, and that the robbers' treasure was safely stowed away in a hiding-place of their own selection. Wouldn't they make good use of some of it before many hours had passed away?

"That Joe of our'n feels mighty peart this morning," thought Dan, glancing at his brother's radiant face. "He thinks he's smart because he is going to earn a hundred and twenty dollars; but what would he think of himself if he knew that I am going to have six thousand dollars before night comes? Now I'll tell you what's a fact," added Dan, who was firmly resolved that he would not come home empty-handed. "When we get that money I'll make pap count out my share at once, and then I'll take care to see that he don't know where I hide it. He'll bear a heap of watching, pap will."

"I wonder what has come over Dan all on a sudden?" said Joe, to himself. "I don't know when I have seen him look so pleasant before. He's got an idea of some kind in his head, and if I am not constantly on my guard I shall hear from him to my sorrow I wonder if there's another boy in the world who has a brother as mean as Dan is?"

The latter, who was impatient to begin the serious business of the day and get through with it, and have it off his mind, did not eat a very hearty breakfast. He simply took the sharp edge off his appetite, and then pushed back his chair and arose from the table.

Silas groaned inwardly, for now the ordeal was coming. He would have been glad to put it off a little longer, but he knew that if he did he would be accused of cowardice. Everything depended upon keeping up Dan's courage. If the boy saw the least sign of faltering, the whole matter, so far as he was concerned in it, would end then and there. He would refuse to take a step toward the cave, and no amount of money would have tempted Silas to go there alone. So he got upon his feet, took down his gun and game-bag, and followed Dan out of the cabin.

Joe looked through the window without leaving his chair, and saw that they were striking a straight course for Mr. Warren's wood-lot.

"Now just watch them," said he, bitterly. "They're going to begin the slaughter of those English birds before I have time to get up there and order them away. I don't see why they can't lend me a helping hand, instead of trying by every means in their power to get me into trouble. But I told Dan yesterday, that if I caught him in Mr. Warren's woods I would report him, and he will find that I meant every word of it. I shall not try to shield them any more than I would if they were utter strangers to me. Good-by, mother; I must be off; I am sorry to see you look so downhearted and sorrowful when you ought to be smiling and happy, but I will do everything I can to bring about a different state of affairs. You'll get the money I earn, in spite of all that father and Dan can do to prevent it; you may depend upon that."

"It isn't the money I care for, Joe," said Mrs. Morgan between her sobs.

"I know it," replied Joe, hastily. "You want father and Dan to behave themselves, and let me alone. So do I; and if they won't do it, I'll make them."

Joe caught up the small bundle of clothing that had been made ready for him while he was setting the table, shouldered his long, single-barreled gun, kissed his mother good-by, and hurried away.

He did not follow directly after his father and Dan, but took a short cut through the woods, and, at the end of an hour, had his first look at the snug little cabin that was to be his home during the winter—that is, if his brother or some other desperate poacher did not get mad at him and burn it down.

Mr. Warren's double team stood in front of the open door, and that gentleman and one of his hired men were busy transferring baskets and armfuls of things from the wagon to the interior of the cabin.

"Well, Joe, you're on hand bright and early," was the way in which Mr. Warren greeted his young game-warden, "and you are in light marching order, too," he added, glancing at the boy's bundle, and wondering at the size of it. "Mr. Hallet had to take one of his teams to move Tom and Bob up to their house."

"Tom and Bob?" repeated Joe.

"Yes. Oh, you didn't know that Hallet had hired them for wardens, did you? Well, he has; so you will have good neighbors, almost within reach of you."

"Why, what in the world possessed them—"

"What possesses them to do a thousand and one things that nobody else would ever think of," exclaimed, Mr. Warren, who knew what Joe was going to say. "It looks to me like a foolish notion, and I'll venture to say, that they will be glad enough to go home and stay there, after they have stood one snow-storm up here in the mountains. They came well prepared, though. They had two trunks, and they were full to the top. But I like your way the best. When you go into the woods, go light, even if you know that you are going to spend the most of your time in a permanent camp. Come in, and see if we have forgotten anything."

Joe followed Mr. Warren into the cabin, and listened attentively while he described the contents of the different bundles and baskets that were scattered about the floor.

"Your carpet is in there—it was made to fit, so you will not have any trouble with it—and in one of those baskets you will find a hammer and tacks to put it down with. I have brought a few books and papers, which will keep you busy until you can come down and make a selection from my library to suit yourself. This is your cot, and I guess the bedding is in there. That's a side of bacon, and here are your dishes and a supply of provisions. When you get out, come down to my house and ask for more."

As Mr. Warren spoke, he opened the door of a small safe that stood in one corner near the fire-place, and showed Joe an array of well-filled shelves. Among other things, there were a number of paper-bags, which gave promise of better meals than the boy was accustomed to sit down to at home.

"That door leads into your wood-shed, which I would advise you to fill up with the least possible delay," continued Mr. Warren, "and there's the axe to do it with. Hallet has given his nephew and that chum of his permission to shoot all the grouse and squirrels they can eat, and I will extend the same privilege to you; but you mustn't make a mistake and knock over one of my English partridges for your dinner. Of course, you know enough to shoot wolves, foxes, minks, and such varmints, without being told, and if you see a half-starved hound in these woods, hunting deer on his own hook, put a bullet into him without a moment's delay."

"You mean a charge of buck-shot," said Joe.

"No, I mean a bullet; and there's the rifle, right there," replied the gentleman, pointing to a Marlin repeater, which stood in the corner opposite the safe.

Mr. Warren continued to talk in this way, while the hired man was unloading the wagon, and when the last bundle had been carried into the cabin, he bade his game-warden good-by, and drove off leaving him to his reflections.

CHAPTER XVI. JOE'S "FIRST OFFICIAL ACT."

Joe Morgan stood in front of the cabin, watching his employer as long as he remained in sight, and then he went in and picked up the rifle.

"My first official act is going to be one that I would rather leave for some one else to perform," said he, to himself. "I must hunt up father and Dan, and tell them to make themselves scarce about here. I could be as happy and contented as I want to be during the next eight months, if they would only let me alone. With a business I like, to keep me occupied while daylight lasts, plenty of books and papers to help me pass the evening hours pleasantly, and a fair prospect of earning money enough to make mother comfortable during the coming winter—what more could a boy ask for? If father and Dan get into serious trouble by trying to upset my arrangements, they must not blame me for it."

While Joe communed with himself in this way, he filled the magazine with cartridges, which he took from a box he found on the table, and went out, locking the door behind him.

But where should he go? That was the question. Mr. Warren's wood-lot covered a good deal of ground, and the birds he was employed to protect might be at the farthest end of it.

If that was the case, Silas and Dan with the aid of the three dogs they had brought with them, could easily find some of the flocks, and create great havoc among them with their heavy guns, before Joe could put a stop to their murderous work.

"When snow comes I shall not have any of this trouble," soliloquized the young game-warden. "I shall feed the birds near the cabin twice each day, and that will get them in the habit of staying around so that I can keep an eye on them; and I shall know in a minute if there are any pot-hunters about, for I can see their tracks."

For an hour Joe worked hard and faithfully to find the two hunters, who as he believed, had come up there to kill off Mr. Warren's imported game, but he could neither see nor hear anything of them.

Finally he told himself that he did not think his father and Dan had come to those woods, because the birds he put up did not act as though they had been frightened before. If they had been shot at, Joe would have heard the report of the gun.

"I'd give something to know what it was that took those two off in such haste this morning," thought he. "They're up to some mischief or other, or else the face that Dan brought to the table belied him. Well, it's none of my business what they do, so long as they let my birds alone. Hallo, here! I'm afraid that I am going to have more to do than I thought for. Go back where you came from!"

As Joe said this he bent over quickly, caught up a stick, raised it threateningly in the air, whereupon a brace of pointers, which had just emerged from a thicket a short distance away, turned and beat a hasty retreat, giving tongue vociferously as they went.

A moment later, suppressed exclamations of surprise arose from a couple of men who were following the dogs, and who forthwith set themselves to work to find out what it was that had sent the pointers back to them in such a hurry.

Joe heard them making their way through the bushes in his direction, but he did not say anything until he became aware that the invisible hunters were stalking him with the same caution they would have exhibited if he had been some dangerous beast of prey.

Fearing that in their excitement one or the other of them might send a charge of bird-shot at his head without taking the trouble to ascertain who or what he was, Joe called out:

"Go easy, there! There's nothing around here for you to shoot at."

The reply that came to his ears was the heaviest kind of an oath, and the man who uttered it came through the thicket with such energy that one would have thought he meant to do something desperate as soon as he reached the other side of it. When he came into view, Joe recognized him as a guide who had more than once been arrested and fined for hounding deer and shooting game during the close season.

"What air you doing here, Joe Morgan?" he demanded, in savage tones. "You thought to steal them p'inters, I reckon, didn't you? Get out o' this, and be quick a doing of it, too!"

"Get out yourself," answered the game-warden. "I've more right here than you have, and I'm going to stay; but if you know when you are well off, you will lose no time in putting yourself on the other side of Mr. Warren's fence. This land is posted, and you are liable for trespass."

The guide was both angry and astonished; but before he could make a suitable rejoinder to what he regarded as Joe's insolence, the bushes parted again, and the second hunter came out. He was the guide's employer; Joe saw that at a glance.

"What's the trouble here?" were the first words he uttered.

"It's a pretty state of affairs, I do think," answered the guide. "Here's this Joe Morgan, who takes it upon himself to say that we shan't stay in these woods."

"Why not, I'd like to know?"

Brierly—that was the guide's name—turned toward Joe, and intimated that, if he could, he had better explain the situation.

"I am Mr. Warren's game-warden," said the boy, taking the hint. "I have been put here to watch his birds, and warn off all trespassers. This land is posted, and you must know it. There's a notice on that tree over there," he added, indicating the exact spot with his finger. "I can see it from here; and when you saw it, you ought to have turned back."

"How is this, Brierly?" exclaimed the guide's employer. "I paid you handsomely for a good day's shooting, and you assured me that you knew right where I could get it, without interference from any one."

"And you shall get it in these very woods, Mr. Brown," was the guide's reply. "You told me that you didn't care how much them English birds cost, or how bad old man Warren wanted to keep 'em for his own shooting, you would just as soon have them as any other game; and seeing that there ain't no law to pertect 'em, what's to hender you from getting 'em? Send out the p'inters and come on. This fool of a boy ain't got no power to make an arrest, and I'll slap him over if he gives us a word of sass."

"I know that I have no authority to take you into custody, but I can report you to one who has, and I'll do it before you are two hours older, if you don't get out of these woods at once," said Joe, resolutely.

"You will, eh?" Brierly almost shouted. "Then why don't you report them fellers?"

When the guide began speaking, it was with the intention of abusing Joe roundly for his interference with their day's sport, but just then there came an unexpected interruption.

It was a regular fusilade—four shots, which were fired as rapidly as the men who handled the guns could draw the triggers.

Joe's heart sank within him. His father and Dan were slaughtering Mr. Warren's blue-headed birds at an alarming rate in a distant part of the wood-lot, and he was not there to stop them.

The guide must have been able to read the thoughts that were in Joe's mind, for he repeated, with a ring of triumph in his tones:

"Why don't you report them fellers, and have them arrested?"

"Four shots," said Mr. Brown, admiringly. "They got in their work pretty lively, didn't they? I have heard that these English partridges and quails are the nicest birds in the world to shoot, and I'd give twenty dollars if we could get a chance to empty four barrels at them in that fashion. I wonder if they are good shots, and how many birds they got."

When Mr. Brown said that he had given Brierly a handsome sum of money to lead him to a place where he could have a good day's shooting among Mr. Warren's imported game, he had given Joe a pretty good insight into his character; but now, the boy was quite disgusted with him.

Could it be expected that ignorant fellows like Brierly would yield willing obedience to the laws, when intelligent men deliberately violated them because they wanted to brag over the size of the bags they had made?

"They are good shots, Mr. Brown," said Brierly, with a grin. "I could tell the noise them guns make among a million, and I know the names of the man and boy who were behind them when they were fired. They were Silas and Dan Morgan—this chap's father and brother."

"Well, he's a pretty specimen for a game-warden, I must say!" exclaimed Mr. Brown. "No doubt he wants to keep all the fine shooting for his own family. I don't believe a word he has said to us, and I think we can go on with our sport without wasting any more time with him."

"I don't care whether you believe me or not," answered Joe, the hot blood mantling his face as he spoke. "If you shoot over these grounds, you will find out before night that I have told you nothing but the truth."

"Look a-here, Joe," said Brierly, shaking his fist in the boy's face. "It was your father and Dan who fired them guns a bit ago, wasn't it?"

"I don't know—I have no proof of it, and neither have you."

"You do know it," replied the guide. "I've got all the proof I want that it was them, 'cause I know them guns of their'n when I hear 'em go off. Now let me tell you what's a fact, Joe Morgan. If you say a word to anybody about seeing me and Mr. Brown up here, I'll report Silas and Dan for trespass and shooting out of season; and if I do, they'll have to go to jail, and salt won't save 'em. There ain't nary one of 'em worth five cents a piece, and where be they going to get the money to pay their fines? Answer me that. Now, will you hold your tongue, or not?"

"No, I won't," answered Joe, without the least hesitation. "If I can find any evidence against them, I will report them myself as quick as I will report you if you don't get off these grounds."

"I hardly think you will," replied Mr. Brown, with something like a sneer.

"It ain't no ways likely, for it don't stand to reason that he would be willing to say the words that would put some of his own kin into the lock-up," assented Brierly. "But I'll do the work for him as soon as we go home, and what's more, I'll report him, too, for—for—"

"Neglect of duty," prompted Mr. Brown.

"Perzactly. Them's the words I was trying to think of. Then, old man Warren, he'll say to him that he ain't got no use for such a trifling game-warden as he is—that is, if he is one, which I don't believe. Now, Joe, will you hold your jaw?"

Joe replied very decidedly that he would not. He knew what his duty was better than they could tell him, and Brierly might as well hold his own jaw, and stop making threats, because he couldn't scare him into saying anything else.

"I don't want to get into any trouble with the officers, for it is absolutely necessary that I should start for home bright and early to-morrow morning," said Mr. Brown, who could not help admiring Joe's courage, although he would have been glad to see his guide thrash him soundly for his obstinacy. "It is very provoking to have this boy show up just in time to spoil all our fun. Let's go over to Hallet's woods, and see if we can scare up another so-called game-warden."

"Well, you can," said Joe, who wanted to laugh when he saw the look of surprise that settled on the guide's face. "You'll scare up two over there, and, Brierly, one of them is a chap that you will not care to fool with. When you find him, it will be very easy for you to ascertain whether or not I have told you the truth; that is, if you care enough about it to ask him a few questions."

"Who is he?" asked Brierly.

"Tom Hallet," answered Joe; and, without waiting to listen to the expressions of anger and disgust that came from the lips of the guide, he shouldered his rifle and hurried off.

"I wonder what they will conclude to do about it?" thought Joe, as he threaded his way through the thick woods in the direction from which the poachers' guns sounded. "Brierly agreed to give his employer a good day's sport, and now that he can't keep his promise, will he hand back the money that Mr. Brown paid him? I don't think he will."

He didn't either, and Joe afterward learned how he got out of it.

CHAPTER XVII. WHO FIRED THE FOUR SHOTS?

It is hardly necessary to assure the reader that the young game-warden's heart was not in the task he had set himself. He believed that his father and Dan had come upon a bevy of Mr. Warren's imported birds and fired both barrels of their guns into it; and, as they were both good wing-shots, it was not probable that very many of the birds had escaped unhurt. Joe's business was to intercept them if he could, and to report them, regardless of consequences, if he found anything except squirrels in their game-bags.

"But I don't expect to find the least evidence against them," said Joe, to himself, "and there's where they are going to take advantage of me. What is to hinder them from doing as much shooting as they please at one end of the wood-lot, while I am skirmishing around the other end? They know well enough that the sound of their guns will draw my attention, and as soon as they have killed the birds they'll gather them up and dig out before I can stop them. It seems as though every business has its drawbacks."

And the longer Joe lived the firmer grew this opinion.

Half an hour's rapid walking took the young game-warden past his father's wood-pile, which now stood a good chance of staying where it was until it mingled with the mold beneath it, and down a little declivity to the brink of the gorge in which Tom Hallet had located the robbers' cave. Although he made constant use of his eyes and ears, he could not see or hear anything of the poachers, and neither were there any suspicious sounds behind him to indicate that Mr. Brown and his guide had kept on to Mr. Hallet's woods "to scare up another so-called game-warden."

"This is the way it is going to be all winter," said Joe, to himself. "Anybody who feels like it can slip in here, shoot all the birds he wants and slip out again before I can get a sight at him. There's Brierly, now; and that's his employer, looking out from behind that big tree on the right. They have followed me to see what I would do if I found father and Dan shooting Mr. Warren's birds."

While Joe was walking along the brink of the gorge, wondering if it would pay to scramble down one side of it and up the other, when he was sure that he couldn't catch the poachers if he did, he suddenly became aware that he was an object of interest to a couple of persons who were so anxious to avoid discovery that they kept themselves concealed—all except their heads, and them they concealed, too, when they saw that Joe was looking in their direction.

But Joe was wide of the mark when he declared that they were Mr. Brown and his guide, who were watching his movements in the hope of finding some grounds for complaint against him.

The concealed parties were watching him, it is true, but for a different purpose, and instead of seeing any reason for finding fault with him, they told each other that Mr. Warren's game-warden was wide awake, and that the fellow who shot any birds on those grounds would have to be lively in getting away with them, or Joe would catch him sure.

When they saw the latter looking at them, they moved out from behind their respective trees, and stood forth in full view. They were Tom Hallet and his friend Bob Emerson.

"Look here!" shouted Joe, who little dreamed what it was that brought the two boys on his grounds, and so far from their own quarters. "These woods are posted, and you can't get out of them too quick."

"You don't say so!" replied Tom. "Come up here and talk to us. You've had visitors already, haven't you? Who fired those four shots a while ago, and what did they shoot at?"

Joe slowly mounted to the top of the hill, and shook hands with Tom and Bob, before he made any reply to these questions. Then he said:

"I have had visits from two parties. One of them I saw, and the other I didn't see, and they were the fellows who did the shooting. They are on the other side of the gulf, most likely, and when I saw you dodging behind trees, I was trying to make up my mind whether or not I ought to cross over and hunt them out."

"What's the use of going to all that trouble?" exclaimed Tom. "I don't believe they got any birds; but if they did, they made all haste to pick them up and run with them. You say you saw the other party. Who were they? Did they have any birds?"

Joe answered the last question first.

"I took particular pains to see that their game-bags were empty," said he. "The guide was Brierly, and he called his employer Mr. Brown. He's no sportsman, whoever he is; he's a butcher," added Joe, who then went on to give the particulars of the interview, and to rejoice in the fact that Mr. Brown was several dollars out of pocket, having been confiding enough to pay Brierly in advance for the day's sport he thought he was going to have among the imported game that had just been "turned down" in Mr. Warren's woods and Hallet's.

"Hallet's!" exclaimed Tom. "Did they have the impudence to go over there after you left them."

"Mr. Brown suggested it, but I didn't see them go anywhere," was Joe's reply. "I warned them that they would find two game-wardens there instead of one, adding that if they wanted to know whether I had told the truth regarding myself they had better question you."

"Let's go back and see what they are up to," suggested Bob. "I say, Joe," he added suddenly, but not without a certain hesitation and constraint of manner that was too plain to escape the young game-warden's attention, "while you were walking along the gulf, you didn't—er—you didn't see anything at all suspicious, did you?"

"I didn't see anything but trees and bushes."

"And you didn't hear anything either, I suppose?" continued Bob.

"Not a sound. Why do you ask?"

"Oh—er—the idea just occurred to me, that's all."

"Do you think that the men who fired those guns are hiding in the gulf?" exclaimed Joe. "Perhaps I had better go down there and see."

This proposition called forth so emphatic a protest from both the boys, that Joe did not know what to make of it. They declared with one voice that such an idea had never occurred to them—that the poachers were safe out of harm's way long ago, and, besides, it would be putting himself to altogether too much trouble.

He'd find it awful hard work to make his way through the thick bushes and briars that covered the steep sides of that gorge, and long before he reached the bottom, he would wish he had let the job out. They knew all about it, for they had tried it.

With this piece of advice the boys bade Joe good-by, and hastened away in search of Brierly and his employer.

"Do you think Joe suspects anything?" asked Tom, as soon as Mr. Warren's game-warden had been left out of hearing. "I thought he looked at us as if he had a vague idea that we had other reasons than those we gave for telling him to keep out of the gulf."

"That's my opinion," answered Bob; and his companion took note of the fact that his voice trembled when he spoke. "I hold to my belief that those guns were fired by Silas Morgan and some one he has taken into his confidence. But of this I am certain: Silas went after that money this morning, and shot at the man who ran us out of the gulf yesterday."

"You still think it was a man, and not a wild beast that yelled at us?" said Tom.

"I know it as well as if I had been at his side when he did it," replied Bob, positively. "And, Tom, if Silas and his friend have shot somebody— Great Scott! If I ever take a hand in any more jokes of that sort, I hope I shall be shot myself."

"Seems to me, that Tom and Bob don't take any too much interest in their business," thought the young game-warden, as he started down the mountain toward his cabin. "The gorge runs through Mr. Hallet's wood-lot, and if those boys are going to confine their scouting to the covers on the lower side of it, I don't see how they are going to protect the birds. Well, it shan't stop me. As soon as I get around to it, I am going to cut a path down one side and up the other, and after that I shall cross over every day to take a look at things."

Joe was hungry when he reached his cabin, and then he found that there was one thing that had been forgotten—a clock.

He had already laid out a regular routine of work—setting aside certain things that were to be done at certain hours of the day or evening; but how was he going to follow it without the aid of a timepiece?

A few minutes reflection showed him a way out of his quandary. Among the other relics of better days that were to be found in his father's cabin was an old-fashioned bull's-eye watch which had not seen the light of day for many a long year.

Joe wasn't sure that it would run, but it wouldn't cost him anything more than a two-hours' walk to find out, and he decided that he would go down and ask his mother for it as soon as he had eaten his dinner.

"I can't set my house to rights to-day anyhow," thought he, "because I have wasted too much time in looking for father and Dan; but I'll have it all in order to-morrow, unless some other law-breakers call me up the mountain, and the day after that, I'll begin on my routine, and stick to it as long as I am here."

If you had been there, reader, to take a look around Joe's cabin, you would have told yourself that there was another and still more important thing that had been forgotten—a cooking-stove.

But Joe didn't miss it, for never in his life had he seen a meal prepared over a stove. He would not have known how to use one if he had had it; but give him a bed of coals in a fire-place, or on the mountain-side, and he could get up as good a dinner as any hungry boy would care to have set before him.

He had everything in the way of pots, pans and kettles that he could possibly find use for, but on this particular day he did not call many of them into service—nothing, in fact, but the pot in which he made his tea, and the frying-pan in which he cooked two generous slices of bacon.

He found potatoes in one of the baskets and a huge loaf of bread in another, and with the aid of these he made a very good dinner.

Then he shouldered his rifle (knowing the thieving propensities of the majority of the poachers who infested the mountains, he could not think of leaving so valuable a piece of property behind him), locked the door and set out for home.

CHAPTER XVIII. DAN'S SECRET.

Although the young game-warden stepped out lively enough, his heart was as heavy as lead. He was sure that his father and Dan had come back from the mountain with a goodly number of Mr. Warren's valuable birds, which had fallen to their murderous double-barrels, and that they would take pains to keep out of his sight when they saw him approaching the cabin; consequently he was much surprised to find them sitting on the bank of the river, widely separated from each other, and to notice that they did not show the least desire to avoid him.

When he stepped across the threshold of his humble home, he was still more surprised to see that his mother appeared very nervous and anxious, and that there was an expression on her pale face that he had never seen there before.

"What's the matter?" queried Joe. "What's happened?"

"I am sure I don't know," answered Mrs. Morgan, in a faltering voice. "But it must be something terrible. Have you seen your father and Daniel since they left the house this morning?"

"Not until this very minute; but I tried to find them, for I heard them shoot, and knew they were after my birds. How many did they bring home with them? This is not a pleasant thing for me to do, mother, but they will get into trouble just as sure—"

"I don't think they shot any birds," Mrs. Morgan interposed. "If they did, they have concealed them somewhere. But they must have done something, for I never saw them act so before."

"Act how?" inquired Joe.

"Why, as if they were frightened out of their wits. When I looked out of the window and saw them coming, they were running at the top of their speed; and the minute they got into the house, they closed the door and fastened it, and began trying to load their guns. But their hands trembled so violently that they spilled the powder all over the floor; and then they sat down and swayed back and forth in their chairs as if they did not have strength enough to hold themselves still. There was not a particle of color in their faces, and they acted for all the world as if they had taken leave of their senses."

"What ailed them?" asked Joe, who was profoundly astonished.

"I don't know. I couldn't get them to say a word. Whenever I spoke to them they stared at me as if they didn't know what I meant, then shook their heads and went on rocking themselves in their chairs. When they could muster up courage enough to unlock the door and go out, I heard your father say that he had hauled his last load of wood down from the mountain."

"Well, that beats me," said Joe, who did not know what else to say. "But there's one comfort, mother; I shall have two pot-hunters less to watch during the winter."

"Why, Joseph, you are not going back there?" exclaimed Mrs. Morgan, who trembled visibly at the bare thought of the unknown perils to which he might be exposed.

"Of course I am going back," replied Joe, quickly. "Why shouldn't I? There's where I am going to earn the money to keep you from paddling off through the deep snow this winter."

"Oh, Joe, let the money go and stay at home with me," said his mother, pleadingly. "I shall be so uneasy every minute you are away. If anything should happen to you—"

"Now what in the world is going to happen to me," asked the young game-warden, who told himself that Silas and Dan must have behaved in a most extraordinary manner to frighten and excite his mother in this way. "What is there up there in the hills that's going to hurt me?"

"That I can't tell. I do wish I knew just what happened to your father and Dan. The reality couldn't be any worse than this uncertainty and suspense."

"I wonder if I couldn't induce Dan to give me a hint of it," said Joe, standing his rifle up in one corner of the room. "I believe it will pay to have a shy at him. He can't keep a secret for any length of time to save his life; and if I work it right, I think I can worm this one out of him."

So saying, Joe stepped to the door to take a look at the motionless figures on the river bank. There was only one of them there now. Silas had disappeared and Dan was left alone.

Joe thought that nothing could have suited him better. Dan might be inclined to be reticent with his father sitting in plain sight of him; but now there was nothing to restrain him, and he could talk as freely as he pleased.

Walking leisurely along, as if he had no particular object in view, Joe went down to the bank and seated himself a short distance away from his brother, who sat with his elbows resting on his knees and both hands supporting his head. He never moved when he heard the sound of Joe's footsteps, and neither did he utter a sound; so Joe began the conversation himself, and with no little anxiety, it must be confessed, as to the result. Dan was an awkward boy to manage, and if Joe had entered at once upon the subject that was uppermost in his mind, his brother would have shut himself up like a clam.

"Well, old fellow," said Joe, cheerily, "why didn't you come around and see my new home? I tell you, I've got things nice there; or, rather, I'm going to, as soon as I have time to straighten up a bit. You were up there, because I heard you shoot—you and father. I didn't expect to see you back so soon."

Dan slowly raised a very pale face from his hands, and gazed at his brother with a pair of wild-looking eyes. He did not look like himself at all.

After staring hard at his brother for full half a minute, and running his eyes up and down the bank to make sure that there was no one else in sight, he said, in hollow tones:

"And I didn't look to see you back again so soon, either. I didn't never expect to set eyes on to you no more."

"You didn't?" exclaimed Joe. "Why not?"

"Did he show himself to you, too?" asked Dan, in reply. "You don't look like you'd seen him."

"Seen who? I met some men up there on the mountain, if that is what you mean."

"It wan't no man, Joey," said Dan shaking his head solemnly—"it wan't no man. It was something wusser."

"Why, Dan, I don't know what you mean," said Joe.

And then he checked himself. His brother was in a fair way to reveal something to him, and he did not want to lose the chance of hearing it by exhibiting too much impatience.

"How many birds did you get?"

"Didn't get none," answered Dan. "Didn't see nary one. They are as safe from me and pap, from this time on, as though they wasn't there."

"Then what did you shoot at?"

Dan looked behind him, and allowed his eyes to roam up and down the bank, before he replied.

"I'm 'most afraid to tell you," said he, in a scarcely audible voice. "Joey," he added, straightening up, and giving emphasis to his words by pounding his knee with his fist—"Joey, I wouldn't live up there in old man Warren's shanty two days—no, nor half of one day—for all the money there is in—"

Dan was about to say, "for all the money there is in that robbers' cave," but he caught himself in time, and finished the sentence by adding, "for all there is in Ameriky."

"I can't, for the life of me, make out what you are trying to get at," said Joe, rising from the ground and turning his face toward the cabin, "and neither can I waste any more time with you. I came down after father's watch, and as soon as I get it I must hurry back. I don't want the dark to catch me—"

"I should say not!" gasped Dan, shivering all over. "Say, Joe," he continued, reaching up and taking his brother by the hand, "don't go up there no more. Go and tell old man Warren that he'll have to get somebody else to be his game-warden."

Joe was more amazed than ever. Dan was in sober earnest, there could be no doubt about that, and he could not imagine what he had seen to scare him so badly.

"Don't go back," pleaded Dan. "The hant is in the gulf now, but as soon as it gets dark it will come out—that's the way they all do—and come up to your shanty; and when you see it walking around there, all in white, like me and pap seen it, I tell you—Say, Joey, you won't go back, will you?"

"Dan, I am surprised at you, and heartily ashamed as well," said Joe, who was more than half inclined to be angry at his brother. "You've heard some foolish story or other, and it's frightened you out of a year's growth. There's no such thing as a 'hant.'"

"I tell you there is, too," Dan protested. "I seen it with my own two eyes, and so did pap. If he was here he'd tell you the same thing, pervided he told you anything at all. We heard it yelling at us, too, and such yelling! Oh, laws a massy! I don't never want to listen to the like again," cried Dan, covering his ears with both hands, and rocking himself from side to side, as if he were in the greatest bodily distress.

Joe now thought it time to hurry matters a little. He was really anxious to hear his brother's story.

"I should like to know just what you and father saw and heard this morning," said he; "but I can't waste any more precious moments with you. You know my time is not my own any longer. It belongs to Mr. Warren."

"Do you mean to say that you're going back?"

"Yes. I am going to start this very minute."

These words seemed to arouse Dan from his lethargy.

"Set down, Joey," said he, at the same time casting apprehensive glances on all sides of him. "Come clost to me, so't that hant can't tech me, and I'll tell you everything."

"Will you be quick about it?"

"Just as quick and fast as I know how, honor bright," replied Dan. "And will you promise, sure as you live and breathe, that you won't lisp a word of it to nobody? 'Cause why, I'm afeared that if you do, he'll show himself to me again, and I don't want to see him no more."

"I shall make no promises whatever," answered Joe, who saw very plainly that he could say what he pleased, since Dan would not permit him to depart until he had eased his mind by confiding to him everything there was in it. "If there is any dangerous thing up there in the gulf, I am going to hunt him or it out the very first thing I do."

"Joey, don't you try that," exclaimed Dan, who really seemed to be distressed on his brother's account. "You can't hurt a hant. Me and pap fired four charges of No. 8 shot into him, and we never so much as made him wink. He kept on yelling at us just the same, and now and then he would make a lunge for'ard, as if he was coming right at us."

"Go on with your story," said Joe, whose patience was all exhausted; "I am listening."

Thus adjured, Dan settled himself into a comfortable position, and began his narrative.

CHAPTER XIX. DAN TELLS HIS STORY.

Having fully determined to get rid of his tremendous secret at once and forever, Dan went deeply into all the details, and did not omit a single thing that had the least bearing upon his story.

He could not give a very connected account of the finding of the letter, for that was a matter that Silas had touched upon very lightly. The letter was found in the wood-pile, because his father said so, and that was all that Dan knew about it.

He had read the document very carefully after it came into his possession, and some portions of it were so firmly fixed in his memory that he repeated them word for word.

Then the muscles around the corners of Joe's mouth began to twitch, and when Dan told, in a frightened whisper, how the man who pushed his "partner" into the gorge had been obliged to jump into the lake in order to free himself from the presence of the "hant," which followed him day and night—when Joe heard about that, he couldn't stand it any longer. He threw himself flat upon the ground, and laughed so loudly that he awoke the echoes far and near.

Dan, who had not looked for anything like this, was not only overwhelmed with astonishment, but he was fighting mad in an instant.

"Whoop!" he yelled, jumping up and knocking his heels together. "Hold me on the ground, somebody, or I'll larrup this Joe of our'n till I put a little more sense into him nor he's got now. What you laughing at, you big fool?"

"Sit down and behave yourself," replied Joe, who was not at all alarmed by these hostile demonstrations. "Let me ask you a few questions, and then we'll find out who is the biggest fool, you or I."

"No, I won't," said Dan, shortly, "'cause why I know that already."

"All right," replied Joe; "then I'll get the watch and go back to my work."

"But you haven't heared all of my story yet," exclaimed Dan. "Wait till I tell you, and I'll bet that you won't never go back there no more."

"There are a few things about the story that I don't quite understand," began Joe.

"No more do I," interrupted Dan.

"But if you will answer a question or two I have in mind, I think we can get at the bottom of the matter."

"You needn't ask 'em, cause you'll laugh at me again."

"No, I won't," protested Joe; and he kept his promise, although he sometimes found it hard to do so. "The first question is this: Did the letter that father took from his wood-pile look faded and soiled, as if it had been rained and snowed on?"

"Not a bit of it, that I could see. It was as spick and span as you please."

"That's one point gained," said Joe. "Did the writer say anything about cutting a hole through the ice, so that he could jump into the lake to get away from the 'hant'?"

"Nary word."

"Did you find the rope that led down to the cave, when you went up there this morning?"

"We didn't look for it. We went up the beach till we struck the brook that comes out of the gulf, and we follered that till—till—"

"You found the cave?" suggested Joe.

"Till we come purty nigh to where the cave is," corrected Dan. "We didn't see the cave, 'cause we run against something that wouldn't let us go no furder."

"What was it?"

"The hant I was telling you about."

"What did it look like? Now go on with your story, and I won't say a word till you get through. What did you see up there in the gulf that frightened you so badly?"

These words drove away Dan's anger, and called up all his old fears again; but he sat down and resumed his narrative.

It related to a few things which the reader ought to know in order to understand what happened afterward; but Dan told it in such a rambling way, and made so many impossible statements, which he insisted should be received as absolute facts, that Joe found it hard to follow him, and we will not attempt it.

His narrative, stripped of all the monstrous exaggerations that his excitement and terror led him to put into it, ran about in this way:

When Silas and Dan shouldered their guns that morning and set out to find the robbers' cave, and the treasure that they firmly believed was concealed in it, they told each other that no matter what happened they would not come back until they had accomplished their object. The former, as we know, was not as eager to brave the terrors of the gorge as he pretended to be, but Dan was thoroughly in earnest, and he built so many gorgeous air-castles, and talked in such glowing language about the fine things they could have for their own as soon as the money was found, that finally Silas became worked up to the highest pitch of excitement and impatience, and showed it by striding ahead at such a rate that Dan had to exert himself to keep pace with him.

"You needn't be in such a hurry, pap," said Dan, when he found that he was growing short of breath. "It'll keep till we get there, 'cause there ain't nobody else that knows about it, seeing that you got the first grab at the letter."

"I know it," was the ferryman's reply, "but I'm powerful oneasy to get a hold of that grip-sack that's got the false bottom into it. We don't care if they do put a bridge down there to our house and bust up the ferrying business, do we, Dannie? And anybody that wants that old scow for their own can have it, can't they?"

"I don't care what becomes of it, or where it goes to," said Dan, spitefully. "It ain't a going to bring me no more backaches, I bet you."

"Course not," assented Silas. "You'll be a gentleman directly, and then you can buy a nice boat, if you want it."

"I don't care so much for boats as I do for breech-loading bird-guns and j'inted fish-poles," observed Dan. "Them's the things that make a feller look nobby when summer comes. Say, pap, what be we follering the beach for? The rope that leads to the cave is way up there in the hills."

"Look a-here, Dannie," said Silas, stopping short, and bestowing a very knowing wink upon the boy at his side. "We ain't nobody's fools, if we be poor and ragged. As I told you yesterday, we don't want to slide down that there rope, 'cause why, it'll dump us right down in front of that hant, and he'll bounce us before we can get our guns ready. See the p'int? If we go up the gorge, easy like, and keep our eyes open all the time, we shall see him as soon as he sees us. Understand? But I don't reckon he's up here. I'm a thinking that he's down the road somewhere, watching for the feller that finds that letter."

"I hope he is," said Dan, "for then we won't have no trouble in getting hold of the money. Looks powerful dark and lonesome in there; it does for a fact."

They had now reached the brook, and were standing in full view of the mouth of the gorge. It did, indeed, look dark and lonely in there; so much so, in fact, that if Dan had shown the least sign of fear, Silas would have faced about at once, and made the best of his way back to the cabin, leaving the treasure to stay where it was until the mildew and rust had eaten it up.

"Them thick bushes shuts out all the light of the sun, don't they?" said Silas. "And it's so ridiculous crooked, that we might run right on to the hant in going around some sharp bend, and never see him till we was clost to him. The brook is plumb full of rocks and such, and the cave must be as much as five miles away, I reckon—mebbe more. It'll be hard work to go up there after that money."

"But it would be harder to get it by chopping wood for it," said Dan; "so here goes, hant or no hant."

"You're the most amazing gritty feller I ever seen," declared Silas, who was really astonished at the boy's hardihood. "You go on ahead, for you ain't as old as I be, and your eyes are sharper, and I'll stick clost to your heels."

For a wonder, Dan did not object to this arrangement.

"I know well enough that pap's afeard," said he to himself; "but that don't scare me none. If we have to run to save ourselves from the grip of that hant, the hindermost feller is the one who will be in the place of danger, and that'll be pap. With two or three jumps I can put myself so far ahead of him, that he won't never see me again till I get ready to stop and wait for him to come up."

With these thoughts to comfort and encourage him, Dan did not hesitate to lead the way into the gulf.

The traveling was bad enough at the start, and the farther they went into the gorge, the worse it became.

A dozen times or more, in going the first quarter of a mile, were they obliged to climb over or crawl under immense logs which had fallen into the stream from the bluffs above; and when these obstructions had been left behind, foaming cascades, some of them forty feet in height, and which they surmounted by scaling the steep face of the cliffs, took their places.

It was a bad location for a surprise and a retreat, in which the hant would have every advantage of them. Beyond a doubt, he could skip from one boulder to another, and plunge headlong over all the falls that came in his way with perfect immunity. But how would it be with them? Dan asked himself.

It was a wonder that he did not get disheartened, and declare that he would not go any farther.

Silas hoped he would, for he was growing weary, and, in spite of all he could do to prevent it, the disagreeable thought would now and then force itself upon him, that perhaps there wasn't any money up there, after all, and that they were destined to return as empty-handed as they came.

Dan also had some misgivings, but he would not allow them a place in his mind. The belief that there was a fortune of six thousand dollars almost within his grasp, had taken full possession of him; and even if he had not been sure of it, his pride would not permit him to say the first discouraging word.

He was determined that it should come from his father, so that if their expedition failed he could blame him for it. He pressed steadily and patiently onward, without saying a word, and his father followed silently at his heels.

They were now between four and five miles from the lake, and the cliffs on each side were so high, and the bushes and trees that covered them from base to summit were so thick, that twilight always reigned at the bottom of the gorge, let the sun shine never so brightly.

On a cloudy day it must have been as dark as a pocket down there. Silas couldn't think of anything that would have induced him to stay alone in that gloomy place for five minutes.

"Say, pap," whispered Dan, so suddenly, that his father started and almost dropped his gun, "how long before we'll be abreast of that wood-pile of our'n?"

Silas raised his head long enough to look about him and take a glance at the cliffs above, and then the blood all fled from his face, leaving it as pale as death itself.

"Laws a massy, Danny," he managed to articulate, "we're abreast of it now."

There was something so unnatural in the tones of his father's voice, and in the face he turned on him, that Dan felt the cold chills creeping over him, and it was all he could do to refrain from crying out with terror.

CHAPTER XX. A RUN FOR HOME.

"Yes, sir," repeated Silas, after he had taken another brief look at his surroundings, to make sure that there was no mistake about it; "we're abreast of our wood-pile at this blessed minute, 'cause why—you see that leaning hickory up there on the top of the bluff? Well, I shot a squirrel off'n there about three weeks ago, and that there tree is only a quarter of a mile from the wood-pile. I wish you wouldn't look so scared-like, Dannie. The best part of this mean job is over now, and we ain't seen nothing to be afeard of yet. Look around, and see if you can find anything of that rope. If you can, there's the cave. Go ahead, Dannie, and when you feel yourself getting trembly all over, just say, 'breech-loading bird-guns and j'inted fish-poles,' and that'll put pluck into you."

Silas rattled on in this way simply to gain time, and Dan knew it; but before he could make any reply, the performance of the previous day, which had proved so trying to Tom Hallet's nerves and Bob Emerson's, was repeated for their benefit, followed by a new and startling variation. First, a dismal howl arose on the air, and the echoes took it up and threw it from one cliff to the other, until it seemed to the terrified Dan that every tree and hush within the range of his vision concealed some awful thing that was howling at him with all its might.

Gradually the sound grew into a scream; and at the same moment there arose above the bushes, not more than thirty yards in advance of him, a grotesque figure, clad all in white. Its head was concealed by something that looked like a night-cap; but its face was visible, and it was as white as chalk—all except the places where its eyes, nose and mouth were, or ought to have been, and they were as black as ink. It held its arms stiffly by its sides, and when the scream was at its loudest, it made a sudden dart forward as if it were on the point of jumping over the bushes, to take vengeance upon the daring fortune-hunters.

"Oh, my soul!" groaned Silas; and his legs refusing to support him any longer, he sat down among the rocks and covered his eyes with his hand.

But Dan was made of sterner stuff. For a moment or two he stared at the figure with eyes that seemed ready to start from their sockets, and then his gun came quickly to his shoulder, and two loads of shot went straight for the ghost's head.

This aroused his father, who was not a second behind him; but the four charges had no more effect upon the spectre than so many blank cartridges.

When the smoke cleared away, there he stood, and his actions seemed to indicate that he was about to assume the offensive. He began growing before their eyes; and when he had risen in the air until his height overtopped that of the tallest man they had ever seen, Dan, who did not care to wait until he had lengthened himself all out, uttered a yell that was almost as loud and unearthly as those that came from the direction of the cave, and turned and took to his heels.

He quickly gave his father the place of danger—the rear—and when Silas, lumbering along behind, and stumbling over rocks and barking his shins at almost every step, reached the first bend in the stream, Dan was nowhere in sight.

Knowing that it would be of no earthly use to call to him to come back, Silas took one quick glance behind him to make sure that the spectre was not coming in pursuit, and then darted into the bushes which fringed the base of the cliff, and climbed slowly and laboriously to the top.

He was a long time in reaching it, for his terror seemed to have robbed him of all his strength and agility, while it had just the opposite effect upon Dan, whom he found at last; sitting on a log near the wood-pile.

"Well, we know now for certain that the money's there, don't we?" said Silas, as soon as he could speak.