Chapter VII. Lost!

It was all well enough for the automobile driver to tell them go straight across the field, but it was quite another thing to do it, for there was a broad and deep stream in the middle of it and no sign of a bridge anywhere in sight. There was nothing to do but follow the stream in the general direction of Wharton until they could reach the trolley line. That brook wound in a most exasperating manner, finally heading back toward where they supposed the dirt road to be. Amy stopped and viewed it disgustedly.

"I'm going to wade it," he declared.

But Clint persuaded him against that plan, pointing out that he would be extremely uncomfortable riding on the trolley car with his clothes soaking wet. Amy grumblingly agreed to give the stream another chance to behave itself. By that time they had been walking fully fifteen minutes and the scene of the accident was lost to sight and as yet there was no trace of the trolley line. Clint looked at his watch.

"I reckon," he said, "we wouldn't get that car even if we were on the other side now. The best thing for us to do is hit the road again and beat it for Wharton on foot."

Amy agreed and they turned their backs on the stubborn brook and set off across a meadow which presently gave place to a hill-side field overgrown with bushes and weeds and prickly vines which clung to their trousers and snarled around their feet. Clint said they were wild raspberry and blackberry vines and Amy replied that he didn't care what sort of vines they were; they were a blooming nuisance. To avoid them, they struck westward again toward a stone wall, climbed it and found themselves in a patch of woods. They kept along the stone wall, dodging in and out through the trees, and ascending a hill. Presently it dawned on Clint that the stone wall, like the brook, was having fun with them. For, instead of running straight, as one would expect any decent stone wall to run, it was bending all the time to the west. Clint knew it was the west because the sun was disappearing there; perhaps had disappeared by now. He acquainted Amy with the discovery and they crawled across the wall again and found themselves in a worse tangle of briers than before. But they were desperate now. It was well after five and the shadows were getting long and black. They were both secretly rather glad to be out of the woods, although progress through the briers was far from enjoyable.

Finally Amy, pausing to wrest himself from the frantic clutches of a blackberry vine, raised his head and viewed Clint solemnly.

"Clint," he announced, "I've got something to tell you."

"Fire away."

"We're lost."

"I knew that ten minutes ago," was the reply.

"Then why didn't you tell a fellow? When I'm lost I like to know it. It's the--the uncertainty that worries me. Now that I know I