He hoisted the sack and it was heavier than he had expected; he had picked more ears than he had intended. He wrestled the sack to his shoulder and judged that he could handle it. When he reached the edge of the field, he stopped to look and listen. There seemed no one about. Heaving the heavy sack over the rail fence, he vaulted after it, grabbed the sack and scurried into the woods.

He felt safe now. There was nothing that could catch him in the woods. The woods were home. He knew this forest for miles about, every cranny of it. Angling swiftly down the hill, he headed for the huge hollow oak. As he went, his eyes sought and noted, without too much effort or attention, many different things—the flaming crimson of the ripened berries of the jack-in-the-pulpit, the fact that a small cluster of black haw trees were loaded with fruit that would become edible with the first coming of a killing frost, the heavily laden grapevines, which in many cases masked the very trees in which they grew, the silvery glint of a shed snakeskin left over from the summer, now half concealed in the fallen leaves.

In half an hour or so he reached the oak, a giant that measured at its base a good ten feet in diameter. Twenty feet up its trunk gaped a hole some two feet across. A series of pegs, driven into the wood, formed a ladder by which it could be reached.

There was no sign of Coon. He was probably off somewhere, investigating. It was unlikely, Hal reminded himself, that at this time of day he'd still be inside sleeping.

Hal leaned the sack of corn against the oak, swarmed up the ladder, and crawled through the hole, then climbed down another series of pegs.

The entire interior of the oak was hollowed out.