hanging from the rim of the opening, Roger failed to touch the bottom with his dangling feet.

“I don’t seem to make it, Dick,” he called out; “but now I’m going to try the rope. Hurrah! here’s the bottom at last; and I judge that it’s only about eight feet or so below the opening. Coming down, now?”

“Yes, because here’s the rain pouring down; keep out of the way, Roger,” with which remark the older boy started down.

He found no difficulty in landing beside his cousin. The big tree was hollow half-way down to its roots, so that hardly more than a mere shell of the outside remained.

“Listen to it come down, Dick!” exclaimed the younger lad, presently. “Sounds as if the clouds had broken above, and meant to put the river up to the flood stage again, after it had started to go down. And the wind blows pretty hard, too. I hope, now, it doesn’t knock this old oak over, and give us heaps of trouble. Wasn’t that thunder I heard? What if lightning should strike here? Perhaps we were foolish to try so hard to escape a ducking, Dick. There may be some things worse than a wet jacket, it seems to me.”

“That’s right, Roger, and I’m glad you look at it that way; but we’re in here now, and perhaps we’d better stay, and take our chances. Such a storm will soon be over; and, when the wind goes down some, we can paddle across the Missouri without running the risk of a bad spill. We promised mother not to take too many chances, because she dreads the water, after losing her brother the way she did in the drifting ice three years ago this spring.”

The wind howled dismally around them, and the rain beat heavily against the thin shell of the tree, so that at times it creaked and groaned in a way that excited the fears of Roger anew, for he thought it might be about to give up its long fight, and yield to the storm’s fury.

But Dick kept his courage up by words of good cheer.

“Already I think the worst is over,” he returned. “It seems to me the noise does not come quite so heavily; and yes, when you look up, Roger, you can even see light at the opening, something that I couldn’t do before. We’ll have to wait here a little while, and then we can crawl out to hunt up our boat, and start for the settlement on the other shore.”

Roger naturally twisted his neck in order to see the glad sight of daylight above; but immediately gave expression to a cry.

“What is it?” asked Dick, knowing from the tone of his cousin’s exclamation that he had seen something that meant new trouble for them.

“The bear, Dick!” gasped the other boy.

“What about him?” demanded Dick; but doubtless he was able to make a pretty good guess concerning the nature of the discovery.

“He just stuck his snout into the hole as if he smelled us; and look there, will you? All the light is shut out! Dick, what shall we do? For I believe the bear is starting to back down inside the tree!”