He raced to the cabin and flung open the door.  A single glance showed him his cupboard had been rifled of its food supplies.  He leaped toward his operating-table and stopped aghast.  His face turned pale, his hands fell helplessly to his sides, and he stood looking at the instruments before him, the picture of despair.  A heavy file lay across the terminals of his battery, and the battery was useless.

Unnerved, Charley sank down on a chair.  He covered his face with his hands.  It would take him hours to reach the Morton home on foot.  And it might be hours more before the forester could be notified.  It looked as though the forest were doomed.

Fairly shaking himself, as a terrier shakes a rat, Charley freed himself of the fear that clutched at his heart and forced himself to think.  Calmly he began to consider what he could do.  He thought of the dry cells he had first used.  They were still wired together and in the cabin.  Like a flash Charley coupled them to his instrument, but the cells were exhausted.  He could get no spark from them.

Again he sat down and thought.  Suddenly he leaped to his feet.  “The army truck!” he cried.  “If he overlooked that, I’ll beat him yet.”

He began to assemble tools and instruments.  But when he looked for wire to fashion an aerial, his face grew black.  The intruder had taken both aerial and lead-in wire, and Charley hadn’t a hundred feet of wire left in the place.  What should he do?  What could he do?

Again he paused and pondered.  And again an idea came to him.  “They use trees for aerials,” he muttered, “and they make perfect ones to receive by.  I don’t know whether one could send from them or not.  But it’s my last chance.  I’ll try it.”

He gathered together his tools and instruments, including the creepers he had used in putting up the telephone-line, carefully stowed them all in a big basket and started down the mountain.  A hundred yards from the door he turned about and ran back.  When he came out of the cabin again, his rifle was tucked under his arm.  Then he went down the mountain as fast as he could travel.

Fearfully he studied the truck as he drew near.  It was untouched.  With a cry of joy, Charley tore open the battery box.  In no time he had some wires fast to the battery.  He spread out his instruments and coupled everything carefully together.  The outfit lacked only an aerial.

Buckling on his creepers, and stuffing some spikes and a hammer in his pocket, Charley rapidly mounted a tall tree that stood close beside the truck.  As luck would have it, the tree stood all by itself, its nearest neighbors having been cut in making the road.  Two-thirds of the way up the tree, Charley drove a spike deep into the wood.  He sank a second spike not far from the first.  Then he drove home a third.  The lead-in wire dangled behind him at his belt.  He unfastened it and twisted it tight to the spikes, wrapping it close about one after the other.  Then he climbed down and made sure his wire did not touch the earth.  Trembling with eagerness, he sat down at his key.