where people have been walking. It must lead to our camp. I'll follow it
up, anyhow. That will be better than dodging around here until I get
'wheels in my head,' as Uncle Eb says he did once when he lost his way
in the woods, and kept wandering round and round in a circle."

Puffing with excitement and revived hope, the boy started off on this
new trail, which he blessed at first--oh, how he blessed it!--as if it
had been a golden clew to lead him out of his difficulty. To be sure, it
was not a blazed trail; there were no notches in the trees, but the
ground showed distinct signs of being frequently and recently travelled
over. Though footprints were not traceable, moss, earth, and in some
places the forest undergrowth of dwarfed bushes, were thoroughly pressed
and trodden.

Dol never doubted but that it was a human trail, a track continually
used by some woodsman; but he thought that the unknown traveller,
whoever he was, must have agile legs and a taste for athletics, for many
times he had to hoist himself, his gun, and the ducks over some big
windfall which lay right across the way. The dead quackers he pitched
before him, fearing that by the time he got back to camp--if ever he
did?--their flesh would be too bruised to look like respectable meat;
for he was obliged to have one hand free to help him in scrambling over
each fallen tree.

Once or twice this strange trail led him through thickets where the
bushes grew so high as to lash his face. He came to regard slippery,
projecting roots and rough stones, which galled his feet, protected only
by the thin soles of his moccasins, as matters of course. His wind
decreased, and his blessings ceased. Yet he followed on, walking,
walking, interminably walking, with now and again an interval of