"Never knowed Sam was such a friend o' Jake's!" muttered another, with deepest pity. But Blackstock stood close beside the body of the murdered man, and watched with a face of granite the efforts of Jim to dig under the big white stone. His absorption in such an apparently frivolous matter attracted the notice of the crowd. A hush fell upon them all, broken only by the hoarse, half-smothered ravings of Sam Hawker. "'Tain't no woodchuck Jim's diggin' for, you see!" muttered one of the constables to the puzzled Stephens. "Tug don't seem to think so, neither," agreed Stephens. "Angus," said Blackstock in a low, strained voice to the constable who had just spoken, "would ye mind stepping round an' givin' Jim a lift with that there stone!" The constable hastened to obey. As he approached, Jim looked up, his face covered thickly with earth, wagged his tail in greeting, then fell to work again with redoubled energy. The constable set both hands under the stone, and with a huge heave turned it over. With a yelp of delight Jim plunged his head into the hole, grabbed something in his mouth, and tore around the pool with it. The something was long and whitish, and trailed as he ran. He laid it at Blackstock's feet. Blackstock held it up so that all might see it. It was a painted Indian belt, and it was stained and smeared with blood. The constable picked out of the hole a package of bills. For some moments no one spoke, and even the ravings of Hawker were stilled. Then Tug Blackstock spoke, while every one, as if with one consent, turned his eyes away from the face of Sam Hawker, unwilling to see a comrade's shame and horror. "This is a matter now for jedge and jury, boys," said he in a voice that was grave and stern. "But I think you'll all agree that we hain't no call to detain this gentleman, who's been put to so much inconvenience all on account of our little mistake." "Don't mention it, don't mention it," protested the book agent, as his guards, with profuse apologies, released him. "That's a mighty intelligent dawg o' yours, Mr. Blackstock." "He's sure done _you_ a good turn this day, mister," replied the Deputy grimly. III. The Hole in the Tree I It was Woolly Billy who discovered the pile--notes and silver, with a few stray gold pieces--so snugly hidden under the fishhawk's nest. The fish-hawk's nest was in the crotch of the old, half-dead rock-maple on the shore of the desolate little lake which lay basking in the flat-lands about a mile back, behind Brine's Rip Mills. As the fish-hawk is one of the most estimable of all the wilderness folk, both brave and inoffensive, troubling no one except the fat and lazy fish that swarmed in the lake below, and as he is protected by a superstition of the backwoodsmen, who say it brings ill-luck to disturb the domestic arrangements of a fish-hawk, the big nest, conspicuous for miles about, was never disturbed by even the most amiable curiosity.