And we had better hurry," he added,
with a glance at the sky. "For I guess there's a storm coming; feels
like it."
In a yellow-birch top at a little opening near the old road we saw two
partridges eating buds; Addison shot one of them and took it along,
slung to his gun barrel.
The faint trail of the sled continued along the old winter road all the
way up to the clearing where the negro had lived, and by ten o'clock we
came into view of the two log cabins. Very still and solitary they
looked under that cold gray sky.
"No smoke," Addison said. "But we'll soon know." He called once. We then
hurried forward and pushed open the door of the larger cabin. No one was
there.
But clearly the two truants had stopped there, for the sled track led
directly to the door of the cabin. There had been a fire in the stone
fireplace. Beside a log at the door, too, Addison espied a hatchet that
a while before we had missed from the tool bench in the wagon-house.
"Well, if that isn't like their carelessness!" he exclaimed, laughing.
"I'll take this along."
But the runaways had not tarried long. We found the sled track again,
leading into the woods at the northwest of the clearing.
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