prints by the stream, still remembered that what danger did lurk about them was bound to be unsuspected and unseen.
It had been, one day, Hugh’s turn to replenish the empty larder so that he had spent the whole afternoon fishing about a mile from the cottage. Dusk was just beginning, yet he lingered for “just one more bite,” since luck had not been good and he wished to carry home enough fish for one meal at least. He waited long for a nibble, shifting impatiently from foot to foot.
“It must be getting too cold for fishing,” he commented to himself. “Why, it feels like winter all of a sudden; it has changed a great deal since morning.”
He had just pulled in a flopping trout and had dropped it into the basket when a sudden sound startled him so that he dropped his rod. It was the sharp crack of a rifle, followed immediately by a second and a third, the prearranged signal of alarm. The pirates had struck at last!
A mile is a long way to run when the course is over a heavily wooded ridge and through a valley
