And so Bessie fought down that blind instinct to scream out her terror, and, in a moment, throwing off her blanket, she began to creep out into the black woods, dark now as pitch, and as impenetrable, it seemed, as one of the tropical jungles she had read of.

One thing Bessie felt to be, above everything, necessary.  She must find out what the gypsy meant to do, and where he was taking Dolly.  If, by some lucky chance, she could track him, there would be a far better opportunity to rescue Dolly in the morning, when the guides would be called to help, and, if necessary, men from the hotel at Loon Pond and other places in the woods.  To such a call for help, Bessie knew well there would be an instant response.

“He’ll never go back to the camp,” Bessie told herself, trying to argue the problem out, so that she might overlook none of the points that were involved, and that might make so much difference to poor Dolly, who was paying so dear a price for her prank.  “If he did, he’d be sure that there would be people there, looking for him, as soon as the word got around that Dolly was missing.”

She stopped for a moment, to listen attentively, but though the woods were full of slight noises, she heard nothing that she could decide positively was the gypsy.  Still, burdened as he was with Dolly, it seemed to Bessie that he must make some noise, no matter how skilled a woodsman he might be, and how much training he had had in silent traveling in his activities as a poacher and hunter of game in woods where keepers were on guard.

“He’ll find out some place where they’re not likely to look for him, and stay there until the people around here have given up the idea of finding him,” said Bessie to herself.  “That’s why I’ve got to follow him now.  And I’m sure he’s on one of the trails; he couldn’t carry Dolly through the thick woods, no one could.  Oh, I wish I could hear something!”

That wish, for the time, at least, was to be denied, but it was not long before Bessie, still tramping through thick undergrowth in the direction she was sure her quarry had taken, came to a break in the woods, where it was a little lighter, and she could see her way.

She saw at once that she had come to a trail, and, though she had never seen it before, she guessed that it was the one that led to Deer Mountain, from what Miss Eleanor had told her about the trails about the camp.  And, moreover, as she started to follow it, convinced that the gypsy, on finding it, would have abandoned the rougher traveling of the uncut woods, she saw something that almost wrung a cry of startled joy from her.

It was not much that she saw, only a fragment of white cloth, caught in the branches of a bush that had pushed itself out onto the trail.  But it was as good as a long letter, for the cloth was from Dolly’s dress, and it was plain and unmistakable evidence that her chum had been carried along this trail.