e, and I'll tell you why. If Mas'r Landell had
only walked off somewhere to see how his coffee or cocoa was growing,
and where it wanted hoeing up, do you think that Muster Indian there
would have been above saying so? Not he, Mas'r Harry. But what does he
do now? Why, he turns stunt, and won't answer a word; and what does
that show, eh? Why, that, as I said before, we didn't ought to have
left your poor uncle, who's been knocked on the head, and robbed, and
then hidden away. Well, do you know what we've got to do now, Mas'r
Harry?"

"Search for him, of course," I said emphatically.

"To be sure, and both together, or we may get knocked on the head too;
and I shouldn't like that on account of Sally Smith and Miss--"

"Tom," I said, "your tongue runs too fast. Let us have more action.
Come along. And as to your knocking-on-the-head work, we have nothing
to fear there so long as we have no gold about us."

"Gently there, Mas'r Harry," said Tom. "We've got no gold about us, I
know; but how many people know that, eh? Well, I'll tell you--_two_;
and I'm one, and you're the other. You keep a sharp look-out, and don't
you trust nobody at all with a red skin, and only two or three who have
got white."

As we conversed we kept on advancing towards the plantation rows, when
Tom stooped down so as to gaze intently at the ground, and then trotted
slowly along, as if seeking for a place where the grass was broken
down--an example I followed, to halt at length, with the Indians
watching me intently from the shed as I reached a spot nearly opposite
to the part of the verandah where I had parted with my uncle.

"Come here, Tom!" I said in a low voice; and he ran up. "What do you
think of this?"

"Been beaten-down and then smoothed over again," said Tom excitedly.
"Something has been dragged over here, Mas'r Harry."

"So I thought, Tom," I exclaimed. "Now let us try whether an Englishman
can follow a trail; for it looks as if my uncle must have passed along
here."

There was evidently a display of some little excitement amongst the
Indians in the shed as we took our first steps along a well-marked
track.

"They saw it, Mas'r Harry!" exclaimed Tom. "Look at 'em."

I did not answer, for my eyes were glued to the track, which now showed
plainly that a body had been dragged along through the tender herbage in
a perfectly straight line; and I was not long in perceiving that the
track went in the direction of the