“And I can’t be more than five miles from home, too!” he reproached himself, in tired disgust.

CHAPTER IV

A NIGHT IN THE WOODS

Although it was not yet noon, Ralph was as hungry as a young wolf, for he had eaten nothing more than a dish of cold oatmeal and milk since five o’clock that morning, and he had taken no provisions with him.  Assailed now by the pangs of a youthful, healthy, unsatisfied appetite, he began to wonder what he could manage to “scare up” in the form of edibles.

Near at hand was one of the numerous small springs with which these hills abounded.  It rilled up out of the earth and rocks and formed a pool of clear water in which cress grew plentifully, furnishing him with a welcome salad.  He gathered a hatful of last autumn’s chestnuts—–­somewhat soggy, to be sure—–­and, making a small fire of leaves and bark, he proceeded to roast these in the embers:  a tedious and unsatisfactory process at best.  Having thus taken off the edge of his hunger, he set forth upon his homeward journey again, in a new direction.

“The next time I come up here in this neck of the woods I’ll have a pocket compass or a watch, at least,” he said to himself.  “It was foolish of me to start off without one, but I’ve learned a lesson today, anyhow.  The trouble is, I never dreamed I’d get lost!”

He was headed directly from Pioneer Lake, as he thought, toward the hills beyond it, and presently, as he began to climb, the scenery grew wilder and more unfamiliar, the trees taller and set more thickly together, the undergrowth almost impenetrable.  Still he fought on.  It seemed he had never been so far in this direction before, and after the first rush of angry despair had passed, he felt doggedly curious to learn whither he was going, and what landmark he would see first.

For almost two hours he plodded on, burdened with his rifle and the pair of eagles, scratching his hands and face, tearing his clothes.  It was a miserable, heart-breaking tramp, one which might have caused a less plucky lad to sit down and give way to doleful helplessness.  Even Ralph felt an uncanny sense of utter loneliness, and he upbraided his own stupidity, as he chose to call it, in wandering so far afield.

At last he noticed a faint roaring noise at the right, and he turned in that direction, blindly, aimlessly.  As he advanced through the undergrowth the sound grew louder and louder, until finally he emerged from the thicket and stood upon the bank of a deep stream which rushed turbulently along and dropped over a ridge, falling sixty or seventy feet into a cup-like hollow in the rock.

Ralph uttered a cry of delight.  “Why, it’s my own waterfall!  I’ve been wandering in a big circle all this while, and here I am not far from my boulder where—–­ouch!” The sentence ended in a loud wail of agony, for, taking a step forward, the young wayfarer’s foot had slipped on a loose stone.  His ankle was severely wrenched.