sort. "So, let's drop down right where we are.
It's a good enough lunching place. The cat thought so, you can see."

They soon settled in comfortable places, each with a tree to lean his
back against while he munched the dry sandwiches that had been hurriedly
put together, a little potted ham between crackers, with a slice of
cheese thrown in for good measure.

The sun felt warm overhead, but the atmosphere at this altitude was
bracing and refreshing indeed, as mountain air always is. The boys, as
they ate, talked incessantly, covering the ground of what they hoped to
accomplish, if fortune were only kind enough to favor them, and the
moonshiners to allow them to leave the mountains in peace.

Bob was explaining that after all it might be well for him to divide his
mission into two parts, and get Bertha disposed of, before thinking of
trying to find whether the mysterious prisoner of the moonshiners could
really be his dear father, when their conversation was interrupted by a
scream from a point close by.

The two boys sprang to their feet, and looked at each other blankly.

"That was a girl called out, Bob!" exclaimed Thad. "We can't tell but
what it may be a trap of some kind, but that's a chance we've just got
to take. Come on, and we'll soon see what it means!"

CHAPTER XVII.

IN LUCK AGAIN.

BOB was quite as eager as his companion to hurry forward and see what
that cry of a girl's voice might mean. Whoever heard of a Southern boy
unwilling to act in similar circumstances?

The two of them had noted the quarter from whence the shrill scream
came, and were making a bee line for it as fast as the rough nature of
the ground permitted.

"Keep back, thar, you ugly critter! Don't you dar jump at me! Oh! if I
could on'y git free, I'd show you!" they heard just beyond the fringe of
bushes.

Bursting through these, and the scene lay before them. It was a girl, a
real mountain girl too, who had called out. She was half bent over, as
though trying all her might to wrench her foot free, for it seemed to be
caught in a crevice of the rock, as in a vise.

Not ten feet away from her crouched an ugly wildcat. Its ears were bent
backward toward its body; the yellow eyes seemed to glow with an ugly
fire; and there could be no doubt but that the animal was getting ready
to jump at the girl, possibly angered by the red sunbonnet she wore.

She had managed to pick up a stone, with which she was ready to do
battle