“You didn’t know what you were looking for; did you?”
“Now we know,” chuckled Dan. “We’re looking for a hole in the ground where there is a fire. Goodness! won’t it be fine to be warm again?”
For the boys were badly chilled by now. Billy could scarcely keep his teeth from chattering.
From where they stood the boys could dimly see the black trunk of the hollow tree which Dan believed was the chimney of the mysterious den in the rocks.
“You go one way; I’ll go the other. Don’t lose sight of the tree,” advised the older Speedwell.
They separated. The snow sifted down so thickly that it was not long before they lost sight of each other. It was no easy matter to get about among the boulders and roughage of the hillside. Big rocks cropped out in places; and there were many stumps, and masses of vines and bushes to trip them. That all these obstructions were pretty well masked in the fallen snow made the going all the harder.
Billy had every confidence in his brother’s judgment; and it did seem as though Dan must be right about the cave and the strange chimney connected with it. Somewhere underneath where they trod was a warm hollow, sheltering, perhaps, only the boy whom they called “Dummy.” If he was alone, Billy was sure he would give Dan and himself shelter.
But they wanted to be sure of that. Billy wasn’t desirous of “mixing in” with those three masked robbers who had treated old John Bromley so roughly.
And so thinking, as he crept on over the higher part of the island above the hollow stump, Billy suddenly stepped right out into space. At least, so it seemed. He put his foot upon a bank of snow, and “slumped right in”!
The snow had treacherously filled a narrow cut between two boulders. Billy dropped to his chin in the soft, cold mass, and then found that he was wedged so tightly that he couldn’t get out.
He dared not shout to Dan. _That_ might be their undoing indeed. If there were men about whom they must perforce consider enemies, Billy was determined not to bring them out here.
So he struggled, and panted, and wrenched himself from side to side, and tried his very best to seize upon the edge of the rock above him and draw his body up. All to no purpose!
He was just as much a prisoner as though he were bound with cords. The snow was fast drifting over him, too. Billy was already badly chilled, and the thought of being covered completely by the snow made him shake all the more.