“Welcome to our midst!” grinned Tommy.

Antoine eyed the lad keenly for an instant and then turned his eyes toward Will.

“What are you doing in this country?” he asked.

“Fishing and bunting!” was the reply.

“Hunting for what?”

“Do you think we’re looking for a forty story skyscraper?” demanded Tommy.

Again Antoine glanced sharply at the boy, but seemed determined not to give the slightest attention to his irrelevant observation.

“Who sent you here?” he asked of Will.

“Gee-whiz!” exclaimed Tommy angrily.  “Is this the third degree?”

“How long are you going to remain here?” asked Antoine, without paying any attention to the boy’s question.

“Gee!” exclaimed Tommy.  “You make me think of the stories of little Clarence in the newspapers!  You’re the original little interrogation point.”

“You’d better answer my questions!” thundered Antoine, losing his temper at last.

Now this was exactly what Tommy had been hoping for.  Antoine angry might prove to be more communicative than Antoine in a pleasant temper.

“Will you answer a few of my questions?” asked Will, wondering if it would be possible for him to spring upon the trapper and bring him down before his rifle could be brought into use.

“If you’ll keep that impertinent little gutter-snipe still,” Antoine snarled, “I’ll answer such questions as seem to me to be worth answering.”

“Are you the man who was seen sitting half-asleep before a fire in a cavern three nights ago?” asked the boy.

The man hesitated for a moment, as if in deep thought, and then answered with an exclamation of impatience.

“Were you in the cave that night?”

“No, but my chums were,” Will replied.

“What did they see there?”

“A man asleep by the fire!”

“Perhaps the man wasn’t asleep at all.  What else did they see?”

It was Will’s turn to hesitate now.  He was wondering if he ought to mention the fact of the presence in that cavern of the Little Brass God.

At first it seemed to him that he ought to do so, that he might be able to secure information as to the exact situation from Antoine by facing him with the fact of the discovery of the ugly little idol.

Then he reasoned that an acknowledgment that they knew anything whatever of the Little Brass God would be likely to get them into deeper trouble, if possible, than that which they now faced.

So the boy decided to say nothing whatever of what George and Thede had seen shining in the light of the fire.

During this brief time of silence Antoine brought his rifle into a more menacing position and began stirring about angrily.

“Are you going to answer my question?” the man finally demanded.

“That’s about all so far as I know!” replied the boy.

Of course Will was not telling the exact truth, but he believed that, under the circumstances, he was privileged to shade the exact facts a trifle in the interest of his own safety.