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 exile. At first he searched often and hopefully for his master, but little by little he realized that his search was vain. Slowly, too, realization came to him that he was a prisoner. On one side of his island lay the sea, on the other a wilderness of salt marsh, boggy and treacherous, an impassable barrier which Rusty tried only once to cross. A house, where an oyster planter had once lived, now stood deserted and desolate, half wrecked by a terrific hurricane. Rusty's ordeal in the storm had filled him with an enduring horror of the surf. For this reason he avoided the front beach as a rule and made no attempt to swim the deep inlet separating his barrier isle from the next island of the chain. But for his fear of the breakers his exile might have been shorter, for fishermen sometimes landed on the island and walked the front beach. But none of these rare human visitors entered the hot, almost impenetrable jungle behind the dunes, teeming with insects in the warm season and inhabited by many snakes.

The heat and the insects Rusty endured as best he could. Deep-seated instinct kept him safe from the ugly, thick-bodied, truculent moccasins. As time passed he grew wiser in the ways of the woods, stronger of body, keener of nose, fleeter of foot. With the advancing summer the sea birds' eggs became fewer and no more turtle trails crossed the