He walked vigorously for half an hour. Then he halted. The same
impressive silence surrounded him.

"I think I have been going a little too far to the left," he
decided. He changed his course and plodded on methodically again.

Another half hour passed and once more the lad paused, this time
with the realization strong upon him that he had lost his way.

Placing both hands to his mouth Tad uttered a long drawn
"C-o-o-e-e-e!" He listened intently, then repeated the call.

The sound of his own voice almost frightened him.

"Oh, I'm lost!" he cried, now fully appreciating his position.

The panic of the lost seized him and Tad ran this way and that,
plunging ahead for some distance, then swerving to the right or to
the left in a desperate attempt to free himself from the endless
thicket, bruising his body from contact with the trunks of the trees
and cutting his hands as they struck the rocks violently when he fell.

"Tad Butler, you stop this!" he commanded sternly, bringing himself
up sharply. "I didn't think you were such a silly kid as to be
afraid of the dark." But in his innermost heart the lad knew that it
was not the shadows that had so upset him. It was the feeling of
being lost in an unknown forest.

Instead of being in the foothills as he had supposed, he was
penetrating the fastnesses of the Rosebud Mountains themselves.