Again and again they heard the faint cry, a man's voice. Tom
stood up and sent a loud cry across the swamp in answer:
"We're coming! Hold on!
"Don't know what's the matter with him," he remarked, dropping
down beside Nan again, and stirring the horses to a faster pace.
"S'pose he's got into a mud-hold, team and all, maybe."
"Oh, Tom! Maybe he'll be sucked right down into this awful mud."
"Not likely. There aren't many quicksands, or the like,
hereabout. Never heard tell of 'em, if there are. Old Tobe lost
a cow once in some slough "
They came to a small opening in the forest just then. Here a
great tree had been uprooted by the wind and leaned precariously
over a quagmire beside the roadway. Fortunately only some of the
lower branches touched the road line and Tom could get his team
around them.
Then the person in trouble came into sight. Nan and her cousin
saw him immediately. He was in the middle of the shaking morass
waist deep in the mire, and clinging to one of the small hanging
limbs of the uprooted tree.
"Hickory splits!" ejaculated Tom, stopping the team. "It's old
Tobe himself! Did you ever see the like!"
Chapter XXVIII
THE GIRL IN THE HOLLOW TREE
Just why old Toby Vanderwiller was clinging to that branch and
did not try to wade ashore, neither Nan nor Tom could understand.
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