Opposite where we were the valley was narrow. I could see the sandstone precipices that walled us in, a sort of yellowish, white colour, all lighted up with the rays of the morning sun, looking like gold towers ‘against the heavy green forest timber at the foot of them. Birds were calling and whistling, and there was a little spring that fell drip, drip over a rough rock basin all covered with ferns A little mob of horses had fed pretty close to the camp, and would walk up to look curious-like, and then trot off with their heads and tails up. It was a pretty enough sight that met my eyes on waking. It made me feel a sort of false happiness for a time, to think we had such a place to camp in on the quiet, and call our own, in a manner of speaking.

Jim soon woke up and stretched himself. Then father began, quite cheerful like—

“Well, boys, what d’ye think of the Hollow again? It’s not a bad earth for the old dog-fox and his cubs when the hounds have run him close. They can’t dig him out here, or smoke him out either. We’ve no call to do anything but rest ourselves for a week or two, anyhow; then we must settle on something and buckle to it more business-like. We’ve been too helter-skelter lately, Jim and I. We was beginning to run risks, got nearly dropped on mote nor once.”

There’s no mistake, it’s a grand thing to wake up and know you’ve got nothing to do for a bit but to take it easy and enjoy yourself. No matter how light your work may be, if it’s regular and has to be done every day, the harness’ll gall somewhere; you get tired in time and sick of the whole thing.

Jim and I knew well that, bar accidents, we were as safe in the Hollow as we used to be in our beds when we were boys. We’d searched it through and through last time, till we’d come to believe that only three or four people, and those sometimes not for years at a time, had ever been inside of it. 1’here were no tracks of more.

We could see how the first gang levied; they were different. Every now and then they had a big drink—“a mad carouse,” as the books say—when they must have done wild, strange things, something like the Spanish Main buccaneers we’d read about. They’d bought captives. with them, too. We saw graves, half-a-dozen. together, in one place. They didn’t belong to the band.