suppose it all seems very silly to you?"

"Not a bit, not a bit. The Big Swamp isn't a bad place, if you've
sand and sense, and I reckon you have both or you wouldn't have got
as far as you have. I suppose it's Ned Barstow you're looking for?"

"Who in the world could have told you? I haven't spoken his name
since I left home."

"Nobody told me, but last week Chris Meyer, the surveyor, was here
and, as we are old friends, we talked half the night. He told me of
his work for Mr. Barstow, the big lumber man, and said that Ned
Barstow, his son, had been out in the swamp with him as surveyor's
assistant for 'most a month, Chris told me that when he left, Ned
was arranging to go on a hunting trip with Billy Tommy, a Seminole
Indian. He thought the plan was to hunt slowly through the swamp to
Tommy's canoe, which he had left somewhere between Boat Landing and
Charley Tiger's. Ned expected then to work down through the
Everglades to Cape Sable if possible."

"Is there any chance of my finding him in that great wilderness, Mr.
Streeter? It looks so much bigger than it did from up north. How is
it possible to keep from getting lost?"

"Don't have to. Soon as you begin to worry because you don't know
where you are, trouble begins. More than one man in this country has
gone crazy and killed himself because he thought he was lost. Why,
you can't be really lost. If you're worried just start for the North
Star. You'll hit somebody before you strike the North Pole. But it's
a heap easier to keep from worrying if you've got company. Lordy,