"Worrah! worrah! but this is a fine scare you've been givin' Tim O'Rooney, so me uncle said whin they towld him his wife was coming over to Ameriky to see him. Here I've been awake fur the last two hours, jist, looking and expacting you to come back, and thinking the red colored gintleman had carried you away entirely——"

Howard impatiently interrupted him.

"Have you seen or heard anything of Elwood?"

"No-o-o!" replied Tim, his answer rising and falling in a circumflex through a half-dozen notes of the scale.

"Then he is lost!"

"What?" fairly shrieked the Irishman.

"He is lost in the woods."

Howard had little heart to go over the experiences of the afternoon. He simply told his friend that he and Elwood had separated on their return, and he had been unable to find him again.

"What did you separate for?" asked the listener.

"Because I was a fool; but O, Tim, there is no use of regretting what has been done. If Elwood is lost, I shall never leave this place."

After a while Howard became more composed, and they conversed rationally upon the best plan for them to follow. Tim O'Rooney was strenuous in his belief that Elwood had wandered off among the hills, and finding it growing dark, had sought some secure shelter for the night. He was sure that he would give vigorous signs of his whereabouts as soon as day dawned.

There was something in the daring nature of the boy that made it probable that Tim was right. Tempted out of his path by some singular or unexpected sight, he had wandered away until he found it too dark to return, and so had made the best of the matter and camped in some tree, or beneath the ledge of some projecting rock.

Such was the theory of Tim O'Rooney, and so ingeniously did he enforce it that Howard could not avoid its plausibility. None knew better than he the impulsive nature of the boy, and such an act upon his part would be in perfect keeping with similar exploits.

There was but one thing that raised a doubt in the mind of Howard—and slight as was this, it was enough to give him sore uneasiness, and at times almost to destroy hope. At the time the boys separated, Elwood had shown a great anxiety to reach Tim, and proposed his plan in the belief that it would bring them together the more quickly.

This made it seem improbable to Howard that he would have allowed anything to divert him from his course unless his personal safety caused him to do so; but Tim said that if such were the case they would have heard his gun.

"Do you s'pose he's the boy to lit a wild animal or any of them red gintlemen step up to him without his tachin' thim manners? But he's the youngster that wouldn't do the same. You'd hear that gun of his cracking away as long as there was any lift for him to crack."

"It may be as you think, Tim, but I believe it is worse. Suppose he is in the hands of some of these wandering bands of Indians."

"S'pose he isn't."

"We have done that; but let us face the worst. If he has been ............