There he had stopped for his rifle and shotgun, and ammunition.  Indeed, he had taken everything that belonged to him, and, loaded down with this loot, had gone right up the hill, keeping in the scrub so as to be hidden from the big house, and had so passed over the rising ground toward the middle of the island.

“The track is plain enough,” Blent said.  “Ain’t ye got a dog, Preston?  We could foller him all night.”

“Not with our dogs,” declared the foreman.

“Why not?”

“Don’t think the boss would like it.  We don’t keep dogs to hunt men with.”

“You better take care how you try to block the law,” threatened the old man.  “That boy’s goin’ to be caught.”

“Not with these dogs,” grunted Preston.  “You can put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

Blent and the constable went off over the ridge.  Ruth was so much interested that she stole out to follow them, and Ann Hicks overtook her before she had gotten far up the track.

“Ruth Fielding! whatever are you doing?” demanded the girl from the Montana ranch.  “Don’t you know it will soon be night?  Mrs. Tingley says for you to come back.”

“Do you suppose those horrid men will find Jerry?”

“No, I don’t,” replied Ann, shortly.  “And if they do——­”

“Oh! you’re not as interested in him as I am,” sighed Ruth.  “I am sure he is honest and that Mr. Blent is telling lies about him.  I—­I want to see that they don’t abuse him if they catch him.”

“Abuse him!  And he a backwoods boy, with two guns?” snorted Ann.  “Why, he wouldn’t even let them arrest him, I don’t suppose. I wouldn’t if I were Jerry.”

“But that would be dreadful,” sighed Ruth.  “Let’s go a little farther, Ann.”

Dusk was falling, however, and when they got down the far side of the ridge they came to a swift, open water-course.  Blent and the constable were evidently “stumped.”  Blent was snarling at their ill-luck.

“He’s took to the water—­that’s all I know,” drawled Lem Daggett, the constable.  “Ye see, there ain’t a mark in the snow on ’tother side.”

“Him wadin’ in that ice-cold stream in mid-winter,” grunted Blent.  “Ain’t he a scoundrel?”

“Can’t do nothin’ more to-night,” announced the constable, who didn’t like the job any too well, it was evident.  “And dorgs wouldn’t do us no good.”

“Ha! ye know what ye gotter do,” threatened Blent.  “I’m goin’ back to town when the punt goes this evenin’.  But you stay here, an’ you git the hue an’ cry out after him to-morrer bright and early.

“I don’t want him rummagin’ around this island at all.  You understand?  Not at all!  It’s up to you to git him, Lem Daggett.”

Daggett grunted and followed his master back to the lodge.  The girls went on before and Ruth was delighted that, for a time, at least, Jerry was to have his freedom.

“If it froze over solid in the night he could get to the mainland from the other end of the island, and then they’d never find him,” she confided to Tom.