“Say!” exclaimed Jack, after nearly an hour spent in tramping the woodland path, “this doesn’t seem just right.  The road is narrower than it was at first.”

“Let’s strike a match and take a look,” suggested Tom.

“And we ought to have been at the river some time ago,” added Bert.  “I wonder if we came right?”

Tom lighted a match, and set fire to a wisp of bark.  It blazed up brightly, and as he held it to the ground he cried out: 

“Fellows, we’re off the main road.  We must have made a turn in the dark.  We’re on some by-path.”

“Then turn back right away!” exclaimed Bert.

They did, using the torch to see by.  But, after they had retraced their steps for fifteen minutes, Tom again called a halt.

“Fellows!” he said, “there’s no use going on.

“Why not?” asked Jack.

“Because we’re lost.  We’ve been going around in a circle.  There’s the same fallen beech tree we passed a little while ago.  We’re lost!”

CHAPTER IX

AN ANGRY FARMER

Everyone had come to a halt, and, while the bark torch burned dimly his three companions gazed blankly at Tom.

“What’s that you said?” asked Jack, as if he had not comprehended.

“We’re lost!” repeated Tom.

“Come again!” invited Bert.  “You’re jollying us!”

“Indeed I’m not!” exclaimed Tom indignantly.  “You can see for yourself that we’ve passed this place before.  Here are some of the ashes I knocked off the bark torch,” and he showed his chums the place where he had hit the burning bark against a stone.

“That’s right,” Bert and the others were forced to admit.

“Well, what are we going to do about it?” asked Jack.  “We’re lost—­that’s evident and we don’t need a pair of opera glasses to see it.  But how are we going to get back to school?  Or even on the right road?  I wish we’d stuck to the way, even if it did go up hill.  This taking of short cuts never did appeal to me, anyhow.”

“But we didn’t take a short cut,” insisted Tom.  “We took a long cut, and that’s the trouble.”

“I wonder if that farm fellow directed us wrong on purpose?” asked George.

“He might have,” said Jack.  “And yet what would have been his object?” If he could have seen that same farm-hand gloating over a crumpled dollar bill about that time, Jack might have found an answer to his inquiry.

“Well, there’s no use going into that part of it,” spoke Tom.  “The question is, what are we going to do?”

“Get back on the main road as soon as we can,” suggested Bert, “and stick to it, hills or no hills, I never wanted to come this way anyhow.”

“Neither did I,” asserted Tom, a bit nettled.

In a short time they had several improvised torches, made of bark, and, each one lighting his own, and holding it down close to the ground, they started off again.