Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 120: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER XIII THE ANDERSON BLOOD Tue days slipped by. Except Hornbuckle, nobody came near the cabin on the Blue Ridge. And he came and went dumbly; much as if his prisoner’s existence had escaped his memory. Ihe prisoner, however, had a very distinct impression of being watched — with an everlasting sur- veillance of unseen eyes. He busied himself with traps and snares, taking birds and rabbits. Other devices suggested themselves, ingenious possibilities whereby he might have * communicated with his friends — if he were not on parole. He tried to avoid this line of thought, which had the un- wholesome pertinacity of all the things to be avoided. One suggestion came on foot: one night as he sat alone — it was so still one might have heard the black frost sprouting — there, at the crack in the logs, two gilded eyes. With Hornbuckle’s knife and a blazing pine torch Tom was out of doors. He was met by an old wolf, which let out a hun- gry whine. “Governor!” He could have hugged the shaggy bag of bones. But he did better, — from a guber- natorial point of view, — he fed him. He watched old Broken Jaw slink away. Loneliness became insupportable. A wild thought, “Did Unaka send him?” The next few days brought two discoveries. The water-supply being limited, he searched for indications of another spring. Twenty feet or so below the verge of the cliff, he descried a ledge of rock crossed by a thread of water from a crevice in the face of the precipice. A thrifty cedar dangled across the ledge, its roots in the ribs of the cliff. That night the wind pounded the mountain-top, and when, at sunrise, the boy strolled along the cliffs, the precipice had been unlocked. The cedar tree had been wrenched away, carrying with it the boulder about which its roots were ECOMMIECLMOOOKSa(e© m