The boy, from his lofty perch, watched the form below him for several minutes, but could detect no sign of life, and rightly concluded there was none.

“I wonder whether there are any more there,” he exclaimed, hesitating to go backward, while he scrutinized the branches with the keenest kind of anxiety.  “I do n’t see any chance where one could hide, and yet I did n’t see that other fellow.”

It was hardly possible that he should find a companion to the one he had just slain, and he resumed his hitching forward, making it as deliberate and careful as he could.  Clutching the branches, he hurried forward and was soon upon the other side of the chasm which had come so nigh witnessing his death.  Without pausing longer he hastened on and was not long in placing himself upon the top of the elevation from which he was so confident of gaining his view of the promised land, as the pass had become to him, now that it seemed so difficult to find, and was so necessary to anything like progress.

But another disappointment awaited him.  The most careful scrutiny failed to reveal anything like the ravine, and poor Fred was forced to the conclusion that he was hopelessly lost, and nothing but Providence could bring him through the labyrinth of peril in which he was entangled.

CHAPTER XXIV A TERRIBLE BED

It was nearly noon, and, having failed so completely in his efforts to regain the pass, Fred determined to devote a little time to procuring food.  He was certain that he would soon require it and might postpone his hunt too long.  Although now and then he suffered somewhat from want of water, yet it was not for any length of time.  There was an abundance of streams and rivulets, and he frequently stumbled upon them, when he had no expectation of doing so.  Quaffing his fill from one of these, he rested a few minutes, for he had been laboring unceasingly for hours.

“What a pity a fellow, when he got caught in such a fix as this, wasn’t like a camel, so that he might store away enough water to last him a week, and then if he could do the same with what he ate, he needn’t feel scared when he got lost like me.”

His gun, of course, was as useless to him as a stick, and although in his long tramping it became onerous and oppressive, he had no thought of abandoning it.

“I don’t see as there is any chance of killing any animals to eat, and, if I did, I haven’t got any matches to start a fire to cook them, so I must get what I want some other way.”

He had noticed in his wanderings here and there a species of scarlet berry, about the size of the common cherry, but he refrained from eating any, fearing that they were poisonous.  He now ventured to taste two or three, and found them by no means unpleasant to the palate; but, fearful of the consequence, he swallowed but a little, waiting to see the result before going into the eating line any more extensively.