To stay where they were was well enough as a temporary device for escaping the savages, but Sam's main purpose now was to get the little people under his charge back to civilization somewhere, and then to do his part in the war between the Indians and whites.

He must first find a way to get Tom and Judie and Joe into one of the forts or into some safe town, and how to do this was the problem.

He was unwilling to take them away from their present pretty secure hiding-place until he could decide upon some definite plan offering a reasonable prospect of escape.

If he could have known as much as we now know of the movements of the savages, he would have had little difficulty.

The larger part of the Indians had left the peninsula now forming Clarke County, and crossed to the south-eastern shore of the Alabama river,--the side on which Sam's root fortress stood, and if he could have known this, he would have made an effort to cross the river again and reach Fort Glass.