he exclaimed. "Father will be angry, I bet. I told mother not
to let the men have anything to do with the hunt, but you know how women
are. She was afraid. She said that if Blent and the constable were within
their legal rights----"

"All bosh!" snapped Isadore Phelps.

"I do not think Mrs. Tingley would have let them go with Daggett if she'd
had the least idea they would be able to find Jerry," observed Helen,
sagely.

"And they won't," put in Ruth, with assurance. "I know he can hide away on
this island like a fox in a burrow."

"But he'll find it mighty cold sleeping out, this weather," remarked
Bobbins.

"He sure will!" agreed Tom.

The party went ahead as rapidly as possible, but even the stronger of the
boys found it hard to climb the steeper ascents through the deep snow.

"Crackey!" exclaimed Isadore. "I know I'm slipping back two steps to every
one I get ahead."

"Nonsense, Izzy," returned Helen. "For if you did _that_, you had better
turn around and travel the other way; then you'd back up the hill!"

They had to wait and rest every few yards. The rocks were so huge that
they often had to go out of the way for some distance to get around them.
Although it could not be more than five miles, as the crow flies, from the
lodge to the lone pine, in two hours they still had the hardest part of
the journey before them.

"I had no idea we should be so long at it," Tom confessed.

"It's lucky Heavy didn't come with us," chuckled Helen.

"Why?"

"She would have been starved to death before this, and the idea of going
the rest of the distance before turning back for home and luncheon would
have destroyed her reason, I am sure."

"Then," said Ruth, amused by this extravagant language, "poor Heavy would
have been first dead and then crazy! Consider an insane corpse!"

They came out at last upon the foot of the last ascent. The eminence
seemed to be a smooth, cone-shaped hill. On it grew a number of trees, but
the enormous old pine, lightning-riven and dead at the top, stood much
taller than any of the other trees.

Here and there they caught glimpses of chasms and steep ravines that
seemed to split the rocky island to the edge of the water. When the snow
did not cover the ground there might be paths to follow, but at this time
the young explorers had to use their judgment in climbing the heights as
best they might.

The boys had to help the girls up the steeper places, with all their
independence, an