The path was followed some fifty yards, when, to the disappointment of all, it came back to the road:  it was one of those whimsical footways often met in the country, the person who started it having left the highway without any real reason for doing so.

Again the name of the missing Nellie was repeated, and again the woods sent back nothing but the echo.

“Hark!”

It was the quick-eared Nick who spoke, just as the hum of conversation began, and all listened.

As they did so the rattle of wheels was heard coming from the direction of Dunbarton.  The peculiar noise enabled the friends to recognize it as made by a heavy, lumbering farmer’s wagon.  The team was proceeding on a walk.

A few minutes later some one shouted: 

“Halloo, there! what’s the matter?”

The voice was recognized as that of Mr. Marston, whom they intended to ask to join them.

Instantly a hope was aroused that he might be able to tell them something of Nellie.  Mr. Layton called back, saying they were friends, and asking whether the farmer had seen anything of Nellie Ribsam.

At this Mr. Marston whipped up his horses, which were showing some fear of the twinkling lanterns, and halted when opposite to the party of searchers.

“My gracious! is she lost?” asked the good man, forgetting the anguish of his friends in his own curiosity.

“Yes, she started up this road this afternoon toward Dunbarton to meet her brother, who was returning, but, somehow or other, missed him, and we are all anxious about her.”

“My gracious alive!  I should think you would be:  it would drive my wife and me crazy if our Lizzie should be lost in the woods.”

“I suppose, from the way you talk,” continued the teacher, “that you have seen nothing of her?”

“No, I wish I had, for I tell you these woods are a bad place for a little girl to get lost in.  Last March, when we had an inch of snow on the ground, I seen tracks that I knowed was made by a bear, and a mighty big one, too, and—­”

But just then a half-smothered moan from the mother warned the thoughtless neighbor that he was giving anything but comfort to the afflicted parents.

“I beg pardon,” he hastened to say, in an awkward attempt to apologize; “come to think, I am sure that it wasn’t a bear, but some big dog; you know a large dog makes tracks which can be mistook very easy for those of a bear.  I’ll hurry on home and put up my team and git the lantern and come back and help you.”

And Mr. Marston, who meant well, whipped up his horses, and his wagon rattled down the road as he hastened homeward.

CHAPTER VII.

AN ALARMING DISCOVERY.

By this time the searching party began to realize the difficulties in the path of their success.

If, as was believed, or rather hoped, Nellie had fallen asleep in the woods, they were liable to pass within a dozen feet of where she lay without discovering the fact.  Should they call to her, or should Nick emit his resounding signal whistle, she might be awakened, provided only such a brief space separated them, but the chances were scarcely one in a thousand that they would be so fortunate.