“I was so startled that I almost let a yelp out of me.

“He beckoned to me and I followed him.  He began to walk about as fast as I had ever seen him go.  He had been looking for me.  Soon he slowed his gait and said in a low voice: 

“’Ain’t ye a leetle bit car’less?  An Injun wouldn’t have no trouble smashin’ yer head with a tommyhawk.  In this ’ere business ye got to have a swivel in yer neck an’ keep ‘er twistin’.  Ye got to know what’s goin’ on a-fore an’ behind ye an’ on both sides.  We must p’int fer camp.  This mornin’ the British begun to land an army at Gravesend.  Out on the road they’s waggin loads o’ old folks an’ women, an’ babies on their way to Brooklyn.  We got to skitter ‘long.  Some o’ their skirmishers have been workin’ back two ways an’ may have us cut off.’”

Suddenly Solomon stopped and lifted his hand and listened.  Then he dropped and put his ear to the ground.  He beckoned to Jack, who crept near him.

“Somebody’s nigh us afore an’ behind,” he whispered.  “We better hide till dark comes.  You crawl into that ol’ holler log.  I’ll nose myself under a brush pile.”

They were in a burnt slash where the soft timber had been cut some time before.  The land was covered with a thick, spotty growth of poplar and wild cherry and brush heaps and logs half-rotted.  The piece of timber to which Solomon had referred was the base log of a giant hemlock abandoned, no doubt, because, when cut, it was found to be a shell.  It was open only at the butt end.  Its opening was covered by an immense cobweb.  Jack brushed it away and crept backward into the shell.  He observed that many black hairs were caught upon the rough sides of this singular chamber.  Through the winter it must have been the den of a black bear.  As soon as he had settled down, with his face some two feet from the sunlit air of the outer world.  Jack observed that the industrious spider had begun again to throw his silvery veil over the great hole in the log’s end.  He watched the process.  First the outer lines of the structure were woven across the edges of the opening and made fast at points around its imperfect circle.  Then the weaver dropped to opposite points, unreeling his slender rope behind him and making it taut and fast.  He was no slow and clumsy workman.  He knew his task and rushed about, rapidly strengthening his structure with parallel lines, having a common center, until his silken floor was in place again and ready for the death dance of flies and bees and wasps.  Soon a bumble bee was kicking and quivering like a stricken ox on its surface.  The spider rushed upon him and buried his knives in the back and sides of his prey.  The young man’s observation of this interesting process was interrupted by the sound of voices and the tread of feet.  They were British voices.

“They came this way.  I saw them when they turned,” a voice was saying.  “If I had been a little closer, I could have potted both men with one bullet.”