Two minutes afterwards and the boys found him.  He must have fallen into the hole while hurrying through the forest, after breaking away from the grip of the boys at the cabin.  He had been severely cut by a sharp flint-like rock, and lost considerable blood, which weakened him so that, as he afterwards confessed to them, he must have swooned away, and lain there for hours unaware of his perilous condition.

The two boys soon managed to get the young man up on level ground.  As often happened, it was Max who conceived the easiest way of doing this.  To lift a dead weight of a hundred and fifty pounds is no light task, and so he started to break away one side of the pit, thus raising the bottom of the interior until they were able to simply carry Robert out of the hole.

Steve was loud in his expressions of admiration.

“Whoever else would have thought up such a clever piece of business, Max, but you?” he went on to say, as they rested after their effort.  “Why, if it’d been me in charge now, I reckon I’d have gone to all sorts of trouble rigging up some sort of block-and-tackle, so as to hoist him up; but you just knock down a part of the wall, and there you are, as neat as wax.  Wherever did you learn that trick, I want to know, Max?”

“You’ll laugh if I tell you,” chuckled the other.  “One day in reading about how some musty old professors are digging out all sorts of weighty treasures belonging to bygone days over in.  Egypt, I chanced to learn how a certain Arab contracted to excavate a big stone weighing ever so many tons, and which the learned savant could not see how they were ever going to get out of the deep hole.  Well, that Arab just kept filling up the hole, and lifting the stone inch by inch.  When he finished there was no hole, but the great rock stood on level ground.  And that, Steve, they say is old-time mechanical engineering, which has never been beaten in these modern days.  The Pyramids were built in that simple way.  Human lives and labor counted for little in those old times.”

“All I can say is, Max, it takes you to apply whatever you read to working out your own problems.  But however are we going to get this man back to the cabin!  Must we build a litter and carry him?”

Robert seemed to be suffering from something more than physical anguish.  A tortured mind can stab even more keenly than painful bodily wounds.  Lying there and facing possible death, Robert Chase had evidently seen a great light.  He beckoned to the boys to bend over him, and then in a weak voice went on to say: 

“I don’t know just how badly I’m hurt, young fellows, but I do know that I’m done with this miserable business.  I’ve got just what I deserve, and it may be the best thing that ever happened to me.  During the time I lay here and had my senses, I’ve made up my mind to ask my cousin Roland to forgive me, and let me make amends for the evil I’ve tried to do.  I know now that it doesn’t pay in the long run, for I’ve come near losing all my self-respect.  Yes, get me to the camp, if you can.  I want to face the music, and have it over with.  Something seems to tell me that the boy isn’t the one to hold a grudge against a chap who’s been punished already for doing an evil deed.”