Presently a mist of daylight crept into the forest and then the boys crept out on their journey toward into ridge of hills.

“Wasn’t that a dream about your seeing the Little Brass God?” asked Tommy as they walked along.

“Sure not,” was the reply, “we both saw it, didn’t we?”

“Well, whoever told you anything about the Little Brass God?” demanded Sandy.  “How did you know there was a Brass God?”

“Old Finklebaum told me.  He said he’d give me a hundred dollars if I found it, so I started in to earn that mazuma.”

In as few words as possible the boy repeated the story he had told George on the previous evening.

“I guess you boys came up here looking for the Little Brass God, too, didn’t you?” the boy asked, shrewdly, after a moment’s hesitation.

“We came up to hunt and fish!” laughed Tommy.

“To hunt for the Little Brass God and fish for the man who bought it of the pawnbroker, I guess,” laughed Thede.  “You boys never came clear up here just to chase through the snow after game when there’s plenty of shooting three hundred miles to the south.”

“You say you think that Pierre is the man who bought the Little Brass God of the pawnbroker?” asked Sandy, as the boys stopped for a moment to rest.  “Is that the reason you followed him here?”

“That’s the reason!” was the reply.

“He seemed perfectly willing to have you come?”

“He welcomed me like a long lost brother!”

“Then it’s a hundred to one shot Pierre never got his hands on the Little Brass God!  Don’t you see how suspicious he would have been if he had had the little brute in his possession?”

“I didn’t think of that!” replied Thede.  “Look here,” the boy continued, “I’d like to know what all this fuss is about, anyway.  Why should any one in his right mind give old Finklebaum a thousand dollars or five thousand dollars, for that piece of brass?  That’s what gets me!”

Tommy and Sandy looked at each other significantly but made no immediate reply.  In a moment Thede went on.

“’Spose this should be a Little Brass God stolen from some temple away out in the wilds of India.  Suppose a delegation of East Indians should be sent here to get it.  Wouldn’t they murder a score of men if they had to in order to get possession of it?”

“They probably would,” was the reply.

After an hour’s hard walking, the boys came to the foot of the ridge of hills and looked upward.  Thede pointed to the cavern where the two bears had been discovered.

“There’s where we went in,” he explained, “but the cavern where the fire and the Little Brass God were is right under that one.”

“How’re we going to get to it?”

“If you want to take your chance on meeting the bears, you can drop down through the opening from the floor above.”

“But isn’t there an opening to this lower cavern?”