sper; but the only effect it had was to produce a
low chuckling sound from Samson.

"What are you laughing at, sir?" cried Fred, angrily.

"Only at you, Master Fred, sir."

"How dare--"

"No, no; don't be cross with me, sir. I only felt as you'd have felt if
you'd been me, and I'd been you."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, it seemed so rum for us to have slipped down here again,
pretending to fish, so as to be laughed at because we hadn't caught any,
and for you to turn yourself upside down, with your head in the hole,
and your legs up in the air, shouting like that!"

"Don't be a donkey, Samson."

"No, Master Fred; I'll promise you that, faithful like; but it do seem
rum. 'Tarn't likely, you know, sir, 'tarn't likely."

"What isn't likely?"

"Why, that aren't, sir. Even if Master Scar is hiding there."

"If? He must be. Nobody else knows of the existence of the place."

"Wouldn't our Nat, sir?"

"No. How could he?"

"Well, sir, I can't say how he could; but he always was a nasty
hunting-up-things sort of boy. So sure as I hid anything in my box at
home, or anywhere else, he'd never rest till he found it; and as he was
hiding away here, he may have hunted out this hole, and took possession
like a badger."

"It might be so," said Fred, thoughtfully; and he approached the hole
once more.

"'Tarn't no good, Master Fred," said Samson, chuckling. "You might just
as well go to a rabbit's hole, and shout down that, `Hoi! bunny, bunny,
come out and have your neck broken.'"

"Don't talk so," said Fred, angrily.

"No, sir, not a word; but you forget that we're enemies now, and that
it's of no use to call to Master Scarlett or our Nat to come, because
they won't do it. There's two ways, sir, and that's all I can make out,
after no end of thinking."

As Samson spoke, he held up his hand, and went back a few yards to
reconnoitre.

"Don't see nor hear nothing, Master Fred," he said, as he returned; "but
we're making a regular path through the wilderness, so plain that soon
every one will see."

"Then we must go for the future to the opening by the lake, and try what
we can do there."

"And get wet!"

"What did you mean by your two ways of finding out whether they are
there?"

"Well, sir, one's by putting bread and meat bait afore the hole, and
coming to see whether it's been taken."

"But we've tried that again and again, and it is taken," said Fred,
impatiently. "What's the other way?"

Sa