“Or maybe a big rat,” added Jack, as they all ran back to where Ned lay in the grass, trying to free himself from whatever it was that held him.

“It hurts!” he said.  “Get it off!”

Jack was the first to get down and look at the struggling boy.

“A trap!” he announced.  “Easy!  Don’t pull it, Ned.”

“More things than trees and lost girls in the Maine woods,” exclaimed Nat.  “Gee whiz!  I wonder what we’ll strike next.”

“Just take a strike at this trap,” begged Ned.  “Seems to me it takes—­oh! be careful, Jack, that hurts!”

“Let me!” suggested Dorothy.  “I can open it, without hurting him,” and she stooped over her cousin.  “Oh, you poor boy!  It has cut right through your shoe.  Now, Jack, just hold the end of the chain so that it cannot slip back,” she ordered.  “Cologne, dear, can you unlace this shoe?”

“Oh, of course,” growled Nat, “it takes a girl!”

“Any objections?” asked Ned, getting back to his good humor.  “Now if this were Nat it would take a whole boarding school of girls.”

Dorothy and Cologne very gently helped the boys get the steel trap free from the shoe.  It took some time to do it without pressing the jaws still farther in through the leather, but they succeeded.

“Now, you must go back in the boat,” decided Dorothy.  “We cannot run the risk of having your foot poisoned.”

“Never!” declared Ned.  “I have often had worse than this, and have gone on after the game.”

He got to his feet, but limped as he walked The foot had been lacerated.

“What foolish hunters ever put that trap there?” he asked.

“I would not be surprised if it were the man who shot the deer,” replied Dorothy, as if the others knew of that happening.

“Shot a deer!  At this season!” exclaimed Jack.

“Oh, I think he was an Indian.  I saw him as I came along in the canoe,” replied Dorothy.  “I thought at the time it was against the law.  Can you walk, Ned?  I do wish you would go back.”

“Seems to me we ought to separate,” interposed Ralph.  “We can never make any headway by searching all together.”

“Well, I will not leave Dorothy,” declared Cologne, stoutly.  “I left her once——­”

“No, I left you once,” corrected Dorothy, in her own way of always taking the blame.  “I think, however, Ralph is right.  Suppose the boys keep along the water, and Cologne and I go farther in.”

“Then I go with you,” said Ralph gallantly.  “It is not altogether safe in the deep woods.  There might be lunatics——­”

“Or muskrat traps,” groaned Ned, who walked with difficulty.

At this they separated.

For some time they heard nothing more than their own voices calling back and forth.

“Isn’t it awful?” sighed Cologne.  “Dorothy, I think it is utterly useless.  I am afraid she is—­dead.”

“I know she is not,” declared Dorothy, “and I am not going to give up until I have searched every inch of this wood.  Now I am going to shout!”