“Well, when I’m frightened, I show it, and I don’t do things that I’m afraid of.  Someone told me once that to do something you were really afraid to do was really the bravest thing—­braver than if you’re not afraid when other people would be.”

“Well, I was afraid, and the only reason I started that car was because I was more afraid to stay there than to run the car, Dolly.  So I guess we needn’t worry much about my having been brave.  It was simply a question of which I was the most afraid of—­the car or Mr. Holmes.  Here, this is a nice spot.  We can sit down on this old log, and there’s enough sunlight coming down through the trees for us to see the map.”

They sat down together on the trunk of a fallen tree, and put their heads together over the map.

“Here’s Jericho, and here, see, Dolly, that’s the railroad we crossed.  Here’s the road—­and, yes, here’s the lane we came up.  It’s a good thing we didn’t try to go much further, isn’t it?  That star at the end means that it stops and just runs into the woods.  I expect they use it for bringing out the trees after they’re cut in the winter.”

“Well, I’m glad we know just where we are, but how are we going to get back, Bessie?  That’s the chief thing, it seems to me.  Don’t you think so?”

“I’ve got a little money with me,” said Bessie, thoughtfully.  “If we can walk until we get to a railroad station—­not the one at Jericho, of course,—­I think we ought to be able to get back that way very easily.  Let’s look up Deer Crossing and see if that railroad doesn’t run near somewhere.”

Bessie took the map then, and she found that Jericho was in the same state as Hedgeville, just as she had suspected.  She did not know what the Hoovers had done, and whether they had obtained any papers giving them control of her, as Farmer Weeks had done in the case of Zara, but she was pretty sure that if she were caught in their state Farmer Weeks would find some way of keeping her there, and of preventing her from getting back to Miss Mercer and her friends of the Camp Fire Girls.

“Mr. Holmes took an awful roundabout way to get here, Dolly,” said Bessie, when she had finished looking at the map.  “But he didn’t really bring us so very far away.  If we were riding in an automobile, I don’t think it would take us more than an hour to get back.  But, as we haven’t got a car, here’s the best thing for us to do.  We can follow this lane, except that we’d better walk through the woods instead of going back to the lane, and come out on another main road about two miles away.  That will take us over here”—­she pointed to a place on the map—­“and there we can get a trolley car to this station.  There’ll be a train to take us to Deer Crossing from there, and then we can get home easily.  Of course, we don’t know how the trains run, and we may have to wait a long time for one, but it’s the best thing to do, I’m sure.”

“Well, we’d better start right away, I guess,” said Dolly, stoutly.  “I’m an awfully slow walker in the woods, Bessie.  I’m not used to them.  But I’ll hurry as much as ever I can for I’ve given you trouble enough already today.”