“I reckon,” he said, “we wouldn’t get that car even if we were on the other side now.  The best thing for us to do is hit the road again and beat it for Wharton on foot.”

Amy agreed and they turned their backs on the stubborn brook and set off across a meadow which presently gave place to a hill-side field overgrown with bushes and weeds and prickly vines which clung to their trousers and snarled around their feet.  Clint said they were wild raspberry and blackberry vines and Amy replied that he didn’t care what sort of vines they were; they were a blooming nuisance.  To avoid them, they struck westward again toward a stone wall, climbed it and found themselves in a patch of woods.  They kept along the stone wall, dodging in and out through the trees, and ascending a hill.  Presently it dawned on Clint that the stone wall, like the brook, was having fun with them.  For, instead of running straight, as one would expect any decent stone wall to run, it was bending all the time to the west.  Clint knew it was the west because the sun was disappearing there; perhaps had disappeared by now.  He acquainted Amy with the discovery and they crawled across the wall again and found themselves in a worse tangle of briers than before.  But they were desperate now.  It was well after five and the shadows were getting long and black.  They were both secretly rather glad to be out of the woods, although progress through the briers was far from enjoyable.

Finally Amy, pausing to wrest himself from the frantic clutches of a blackberry vine, raised his head and viewed Clint solemnly.

“Clint,” he announced, “I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Fire away.”

“We’re lost.”

“I knew that ten minutes ago,” was the reply.

“Then why didn’t you tell a fellow?  When I’m lost I like to know it.  It’s the—­the uncertainty that worries me.  Now that I know I shall never see school and Josh again I feel better.”  Amy looked about him appraisingly.  “Have you noticed any berries or nuts, Clint?  I suppose we’ll have to live on them for a few days.”

“You’re the only nut I’ve seen so far,” laughed Clint.  “Come on and let’s get out of here.  If I’ve got to be lost I’d rather be lost where there aren’t so many stickers.”

“Yes,” agreed Amy, “I suppose we must do the usual thing.  We must walk until we drop.  Then we cover ourselves with leaves, pillow our heads on a rock and sleep the sleep of exhaustion.”

“What was that?” asked Clint.

“What was what?  Don’t tell me you heard a bear!”

“I guess it was the trolley car.  Only it seemed to come from over that way, and that fellow said the trolley line was over there.”

“I don’t believe that fellow very well,” responded Amy pessimistically.  “He said he’d get us to Wharton, and he didn’t.  He said his old car would go, and it didn’t.  He said we could cross that field, and it didn’t—­I mean we couldn’t.  Anyway, I propose we find the road again and sit down and wait until someone comes along and gives us a lift.”