The empty stomach continued to cry loudly for food as the afternoon wore on, and no cabin smoke gave token of life anywhere. He did not suffer from thirst for mountain streams and springs were abundant. He pressed bravely forward, cheering himself with the thought that the boys had said he would come to the tracks before dark. But twilight began creeping in among the forest trees and still no tracks were in sight. Anxiously he listened for the terrible yet thrilling rush of a train which he remembered so well. He ought to be in hearing distance of them by now. But nothing broke the forest stillness save the twitter and song of birds, the scurrying of rabbits or frisking of squirrels with occasionally the sound of some larger animal in the underbrush. Finally night fell with the poor boy straining his anxious eyes for the shining tracks of which he had heard. He forced his aching limbs along till suddenly, with a quivering sob, his strength seemed all to go and he sank upon the ground in a pitiful heap. He was too exhausted to think and in a few moments was sound asleep. He lay upon the summit of a rugged mountain, which dropped precipitately down just beyond the sleeping boy, to ripple off again in lesser lofty heights, with beautiful fertile valleys and tossing streams between. A little, lonely, helpless human soul he lay upon Nature's majestic bosom, with the Infinite hand beneath his head. In the morning when he waked billows of mist in silver splendour were rolling slowly from the valleys below, like Nature's incense rising in her sacred morning hour. Although born in the mountains the mystic grandeur of the scene filled Steve with awe. Rising, he gazed, a part of the worshipful silence, and then as the sun burst suddenly into golden glory above the waves of mist, his mind as suddenly seemed to shoot up from the mists of fatigue and sleep. It was the peculiarly clear brain which sometimes comes with long abstinence from food. Instantly he knew that he had been fooled! Turning to look back over the way he had come he said to himself: "Them boys told me wrong, an' they did hit a purpose. They're lack their pappy, they don't want to larn nothin' an' they don't want nobody else ter nuther." V A DOUBLE RESCUE