LOST RIVER AND THE LADIES
Once again the camp was astir at sunrise, shortly after four. Everybody
was cold, and, truth to tell, a little cross.
“We’re not hardened to this high air yet, I guess,” said Art, as he
built up the fire. But breakfast restored their good nature, and
they all went back up the path to have a look at Jobildunk Ravine by
daylight, while Mr. Rogers was shaving.
“Got to shave, boys,” he said, “because we strike a town--North
Woodstock--this afternoon.”
It was after six before the descent of the mountain began. At first the
way led through thick woods, and, while it was steep, seemed no steeper
than Kinsman. They came upon the embers of two or three camp-fires
beside springs, and presently upon a small lean-to, built of bark and
hemlock boughs, which would hold two people.
“Somebody got tired half-way up,” laughed Art. “Gee, they could have
got to the top while they were building this.”
“Maybe they liked to build,” Lou suggested, which seemed unanswerable.
The path below this point swung over to the side of a rushing brook,
and they began to enter a region where the lumbermen had been,
stripping the forest down to bare soil and leaving behind dry, ugly
slash. The path grew steeper every moment. The brook went down the
mountain in a series of cascades, one after the other, and at almost
every waterfall the path beside it dropped almost as steeply. In some
places there were rough ladders to descend by. At other places you
simply had to swing over a root and drop, often landing in soft, wet
leaf-mould, and sinking up to the ankles.
“Steep? Well, I should smile!” said Peanut. “Say, fellers, don’t you
wish we were going up instead of down?”
“Can’t say I do,” Frank answered. “I don’t see how anybody does get up
here, ’specially with a heavy pack. Wasn’t this path ever better than
this?”
“It must have been once. The water has washed it,” the Scout Master
replied.
Just then they came to a six foot drop, and Frank took it first. He
unslung his camera at the bottom, and snapped the rest as they came
tumbling after him.
“That’ll prove we had some steep work, all right,” he said.
“I believe if my pants were stronger, I’d just sit down and slide the
rest of the way,” Peanut laughed.
But such steep descents have one great advantage--they get you down
quickly. Almost before the boys realized that they were at the bottom,
they found themselves walking along a level wood road, and it seemed
suddenly very still.
“It’s the brook--we don’t hear the water falling any more,” said Art.
They came out quickly upon the highway--or so much of a highway as ran
through this tiny notch. It was hardly more than a wood road. They
turned to the left, as their friend on Moosilauke had advised, and in
a moment came into a grassy clearing, with the ruins of an old logging
camp at one side. This was Beaver Meadow. To the left, the steep wall
of Moosilauke leapt up, and they could see the course of Beaver Brook,
beside which they had descended, the white of its waterfalls flashing
here and there in the sun. To the right was Wildcat Mountain, really a
foot-hill of Kinsman. The meadow itself was very green, and the road
went through the middle of it. At the western end, it narrowed to
perhaps a hundred feet in width, and here a little brook flowed out,
beside the road, and on either side they saw the remains of a dam,
perhaps three or four feet high, quite grown over with grass and bushes.
“The beaver dam!” cried Art. “They just cut down the trees on each
side, and let them fall over the brook, and then plastered ’em up with
mud, eh? My, but they are smart!”
“Did they clear all the trees out of this meadow, too?” asked Frank.
“They didn’t have to do that,” the Scout Master replied. “Once they
had the brook dammed back the water killed the trees--killed ’em so
thoroughly that this meadow has remained open long after the beavers
have vanished, and their dam has been broken open by the road.”
“But why do they go to all that trouble?” said Frank again.
“How many ponds have you seen in these parts?” said Art, scornfully.
“They wouldn’t make a dam if they could find a natural pond shallow
enough so their houses could come up above water, like a muskrat’s,
would they, Mr. Rogers? But I suppose they couldn’t find one around
here, so they just made it themselves. I think they’re about the
smartest animal there is.”
“You mean was,” said Peanut. “I never saw one. Did you?”
“No,” said Art, sadly. “I’d like to, though. Gee, it’s a shame the way
women have to wear furs, and kill off all the animals! Sometimes I wish
there _weren’t_ any girls.”
“Well, they’re not troubling us much this week,” Mr. Rogers laughed.
“Now for Lost River!”
The party turned east, and proceeded down the road for about half a
mile, by an easy grade, till they came quite unexpectedly upon a
souvenir post-card and “tonic” store, built of birch logs, beside
the path. Here they stopped, and after buying a bottle of ginger ale
apiece, a young French-Canadian lumberman, who ran the store and acted
as guide during the summer season, agreed to pilot them through Lost
River. He advised them to put on overalls before starting, but they
scorned the suggestion. While they were debating the point with him,
there was a sudden sound of voices outside, and in the doorway of the
little log store appeared a party of women and girls--and one lone man.
“Poor Art!” said Peanut, giving him a poke in the ribs.
This party wanted to go through Lost River, too.
“We can’t keep the guide all to ourselves and make him lose this other
job,” said Mr. Rogers. “Besides, we’re Scouts, and we ought to do a
good turn and help those women folks through.”
“Aw, no! Let’s cut out the guide, then, and go through alone!” said Art.
“No,” Mr. Rogers said, “I don’t remember the way. I was never through
but once, years ago; besides, we’d miss half the sights.”
“Say,” whispered Peanut, “will those _girls_ put on overalls?”
“I guess they’ll have to,” said Mr. Rogers.
“Me for that!” cried Peanut, with a whoop. “Go on, Art, by yourself,
if you want. I’m going to be a gay little Sir Launcelot to a dame in
overalls!”
All the boys laughed, except Art, who was still scowling.
“Cheer up, Art,” whispered Rob. “It sounds like fun to me. Look at that
nice girl in the door; she’s looking at you.”
Art turned instinctively, and his eyes met those of a very pretty girl
in pink, who was in the doorway. He blushed. So did the girl. Peanut
winked at Rob, who winked back.
“He’ll come,” they each whispered to the other.
Mr. Rogers was talking to the guide, and to the lone man who had
accompanied this party. The man took him over to the women (there were
two women and five girls), and the boys saw their Scout Master bow, and
talk with them. A moment later he came across the room.
“That poor man has brought his wife and two daughters and three of
their friends and another woman up from North Woodstock, boys,” he
said. “I can see they are all greenhorns at this sort of work. It’s
really up to us to help ’em. They are going to get into overalls now.”
The women and girls went up-stairs to the second story of the log
house, and the boys could hear them tittering and giggling, and
emitting little cries of “Ah!” and “Oh, my gracious!” and “I can never
go down in these!” The man came over to talk to the Scouts. He was in
old clothes, he said, which he didn’t mind getting dirty. He was a
timid looking man, and seemed grateful that the Scouts were going to
help him out.
A few minutes later, a pair of feet--very small feet--appeared, very
slowly, on the stairs, and the first girl--the one in pink--came down.
Her cheeks were as pink as her dress--or what could be seen of her
dress. She had on a pair of long overalls, turned up at the bottom,
with her skirts wobbed up somehow inside of them, and the apron buckled
up to her neck. She looked very much like a fat boy in his father’s
trousers. Peanut laughed--he couldn’t help it.
“I think you are horrid!” she said, darting an angry look at him.
“He--he didn’t mean anything,” Art stammered. “You look all right
for--for such rough work.”
“Thank you,” said the girl, and she came over and stood between her
father and Art.
Peanut again winked at Rob.
All the rest of the feet now began to come down the stairs, and soon
five fat boys in their daddies’ trousers, and two women looking like
Tweedledum and Tweedledee (it was Peanut who suggested that!) stood in
the room, blushing and laughing.
“Now come on, we can’t think of our clothes any more. Let’s get to
Lost River,” exclaimed the girl in pink.
She seemed to pick Art as her natural escort, and the pair of them led
the way through the door, beside the guide.
“I don’t see any river, though,” said Peanut, to the girl he was with,
as they went through the woods behind the cabin.
“Of course you don’t; it’s a lost river,” she said.
“Oh!” said Peanut. “I forgot that. Well, here’s where it was lost, I
guess.”
The guide just ahead of them had suddenly disappeared into a hole in
the ground, helping Art and the pink girl down after him.
“My goodness!” exclaimed the girl at Peanut’s side. She was a small
girl, with very black eyes, which twinkled. The other girls had called
her Alice.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Peanut reassured her. “_We’ve_ been falling down
places since six o’clock.”
“I wasn’t thinking of myself,” Alice answered, “but of poor Mamma.
Mamma isn’t so _slender_ as--as _you_ are.”
“Mr. Rogers will look after Mamma,” said Peanut. “Come on!”
He dropped ahead of her into the hole, and clasping his hands in front
of him, made a stirrup for her to put her foot in, like a step, as she
followed.
They found themselves on a rocky ledge, with another drop ahead
of them. At the bottom of this drop stood the guide, Art, and the
pink girl, in daylight. The place was really the bottom of a little
cañon, concealed in the woods, and a small river (not much more than
a brook) flowed along it. On their right, to the east, however, the
river vanished completely out of sight, into a great piled up mass
of boulders. The leaders waited till all the party had arrived at
the bottom, and then the guide led the way directly in among these
boulders, the girls and women screaming and laughing as they followed.
It became damp and cold and dark immediately. They entered a sort of
cave, made by two rocks meeting overhead, and dropped down several
feet to what felt like a sandy beach, though they could, at first, see
nothing. But they could hear the water running beside them.
“Look out here,” said the guide, “or you’ll step into the water. Follow
me.”
Alice, however, didn’t follow him. She was a frisky girl, and she
wanted to see all there was to see, so she stepped to the left, and
suddenly screamed.
Peanut grabbed her hand and pulled her back.
“Sh,” she whispered. “Up to the knees! But Mamma’d make me go back if
she knew!”
“What’s the matter, Alice?” called her mother.
“She stubbed her toe,” Peanut answered, quickly.
“Oh, you nice little liar!” chuckled Alice.
Peanut was beginning to like her!
The strange, underground path grew stranger and stranger. Sometimes
they came out into daylight, and saw the sky and the walls of the
cañon far above them, sometimes they stood in caves fifteen feet high,
sometimes they had to cross the stream on planks, sometimes go up or
down ladders. Finally they came to a place where the way was completely
blocked, save for a small hole, which didn’t look more than two feet
across.
Somebody had painted above it, “Fat Man’s Agony.”
“Don’t worry me a bit,” said Peanut.
“Quick, let’s get through, and watch Mamma come out,” cried Alice.
Art and the pink girl had disappeared into the hole already, Art going
first. Alice lay down on her stomach and began to wriggle through after
them, Peanut following. The guide remained behind to help the rest. The
passage was on an incline, leading upward, and it seemed very long. It
was certainly very dark. But they emerged presently (the tunnel coming
out four feet above the ground, so one had to do quite an acrobatic
stunt to gain his feet, if he was coming head foremost), and found Art
and the pink girl waiting for them at the mouth of a cave.
Behind them they could hear the screams and laughter of the rest, and
Mamma’s voice exclaiming, “I _never_ can get through there, I tell you!”
Alice put her face to the hole and shouted back, “Come on, Mamma, we’ll
pull you through if you stick!”
Then she looked at her feet. “Gee, Grace,” she called to the pink girl,
“I’m soaked up to my knees!”
“I was soaked up to my neck two days ago,” Peanut laughed. “You’ll dry.
Anyhow, we can build a fire when we get out, and you can take off your
wet things, and sit with your little pink tootsies to the blaze.”
Alice, with a laugh, gave him a slap on the cheek.
“Why, Alice!” exclaimed the pink girl, shocked.
“Oh, he’s a fresh one, he needs it,” said Alice, and turned with a
shriek of delight to see the first face of the following party emerge
through the hole. It was “Mamma”! Her face was flushed with exertion,
and wore a look of agonized fright. Her hair was disarranged, and
hanging into her eyes. From behind her issued voices, “Hurry up, Ma,
you’re blocking the passage!”
“Come here, you laughing monkey, and help your mother down!” she cried
to Alice. “How do you suppose I can get out of this hole head first?”
But Alice was too doubled up with mirth to move. Art and Peanut sprang
to her relief. They took her by the shoulders, one on each side, and
pulled her out, supporting her till she could get her feet down on the
ground. Then they hid on either side of the tunnel mouth, and as fast
as a head appeared, they grabbed the shoulders behind it, without a
word of warning, and pulled the surprised person forth. The only one
who fooled them was the guide. He came feet foremost!
There was nearly a mile of this curious, underground path, amid caves
and tumbled boulders, now close beside the sunken river, now above it.
Some of the caves were very cold. But suddenly they saw full daylight
ahead, and they stepped out of the last cave upon a ledge of rock,
over which the river dashed in a pretty waterfall, and went flowing
away down the hill through the woods, on a perfectly sane and normal
above-ground bed.
“Well, that is quite an experience!” said Papa, wiping his forehead.
Mamma looked at her soiled overalls, tried to fix up her hair, and then
fanned herself with the palm of her hand.
“Well, I guess the young folks enjoyed it more than I did!” she panted.
Then she spied Alice’s feet. “Alice!” she cried. “Your feet!”
“What’s the matter with my feet?” said Alice.
“You’ll get your death of cold!”
“Nonsense, my dear,” said Papa.
“Nonsense or not, she’s got to dry them,” the mother said. “We must go
right back to that store.”
“I have a better idea, if you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Green,” said Rob (he
and the oldest of the girls had evidently been exchanging names).
“We’ll build a fire here by the river, and all have lunch together.
While she’s drying her stockings, we Scouts will take back the
overalls, and bring down all your grub and our packs, and then we can
all walk back to North Woodstock together after lunch.”
“A very good idea, too,” exclaimed Papa Green.
“Well, I’m willing,” said the mother. “I don’t much want to take that
walk back, that’s a fact.”
“Fire, boys!” cried Peanut, starting to scramble down beside the falls.
“Hold on!” Frank cried. “Nobody stirs from this spot till I get a
picture.”
“Oh,” squealed the girls. “You shan’t take our picture in these!”
“Yes, I shall! Peanut, you guard the path!”
“Right-o,” said Peanut. “No lady shall pass save over my dead body!”
Frank unslung his camera from the case, and made everybody get in a
group, with the girls in front. They all tried to sit down, to hide the
overalls, but Rob and Lou and Art kept pulling them up. Every time
they were up, Frank snapped a picture.
“Now I’ve got you all!” he laughed.
“What? You were taking us all the time? Oh, you mean thing!” cried
Alice. “Let’s break the camera, girls!”
She started for Frank, but he disappeared over the ledge, with a hoot.
The Scouts had left their hatchets behind, but they made a fire pit,
and kindled a good fire with dead stuff, broken by hand. Peanut rigged
up a stick rack beside it for Alice to hang her stockings over.
Meanwhile, off in the bushes, they could hear the girls and women
laughing, as they got out of the overalls. They came back looking like
normal girls again, only their skirts were rather crumpled.
The Scouts took the overalls, and, with the guide and Mr. Rogers,
turned toward the road, which led back to the store. Peanut lingered a
bit in the rear.
“Toast your tootsies nice and warm,” he whispered to Alice, and ducked
quickly away from the swing she aimed at him.
“Alice!” he heard Art’s girl saying, “I wish you wouldn’t be such a
tomboy.”
Peanut grinned to himself, and caught up with the rest.
“Some skirts, those, eh, Art?” he said, giving Art a dig in the ribs.
Art turned red, and punched back for answer.
“What was it Art was saying back in Beaver Meadow about wishing there
weren’t any girls in the world?” asked Rob.
“Oh, they’re all right, if they wear _pink_,” said Peanut.
“You all make me sick,” Art retorted. “Gee, Peanut, you got your face
slapped, all right!”
“Sure I did,” said Peanut. “That’s a mark of affection. I made a hit
with her, you see.”
“That’s a rotten joke,” said Art.
“All right. Here’s another. You go off and eat _your_ lunch by
yourself, if you don’t like girls. The rest of us’ll have ours with the
crowd. We’ll let him, won’t we, fellers?”
Art only grunted, and made no answer to the laughter of the rest.
“All of which goes to show, Art,” remarked Mr. Rogers, who had been
listening, “that it’s not safe to generalize about women. A man’s
always bound to meet one who’ll upset all his ideas.”
“Or slap his face,” said Art, with a poke at Peanut.
At the little store, the boys paid the guide for their share in the
expedition, and shouldered both their own loads and the lunch baskets
the other party had brought with them, and left in the store. Then they
hurried back down the road.
Peanut ran on ahead before they got to the camp site, and slipping as
quietly as he could through the trees and bushes, came suddenly out
into the open space where the fire was. The girls were all sitting in
the shade, except Alice. She was wading barefoot in the brook, while
her stockings and shoes hung by the fire.
Peanut stood there grinning a second before anybody saw him, and then
Alice spied him and squealed.
“Oh, you little beast!” she said, jumping out of the water, and
grabbing up a tin folding cup, which her father had evidently carried
in his pocket. She filled this with water, and ran at Peanut, barefoot,
appearing not to mind the rough ground at all. Peanut was so loaded
down with his blanket and pack and two lunch baskets that he was in no
condition to escape. He tried to run, but his blanket roll caught in
a bush, and before he could yank it free he felt the whole cupful of
water hit his face, and go running down his neck.
“Alice!” called Mrs. Green. “_Alice!_ Come right back here! Aren’t you
ashamed!”
“Not a bit,” said Alice. “He’s perfectly horrid, coming sneaking up
that way on purpose!”
“Go put on your shoes and stockings and then apologize!” said her
mother, sternly.
“Ho, that’s all right,” said Peanut. “I was awful hot. The water feels
good. I’d like some more.”
“You would, would you?” said Alice, making as if she were going to the
stream again.
“Only give me time to get my mouth open and catch it,” Peanut laughed.
“Alice!” said her mother, again, “I told you to put your shoes and
stockings on.”
“They’re not dry yet,” said the girl, feeling of them.
“Oh, dear, what can you do? The rest will be here in a moment!”
exclaimed her sister, the girl in pink.
“I have it!” Peanut said. He slung off his pack, and produced his pair
of extra socks. They were heavy and long, being made to wear with
high boots. Alice snatched them from him with a laugh, and, turning
her back, sat down to put them on. Then she got up and turned around.
Everybody laughed. The toes were too long, and flapped a bit when she
walked. Her feet looked huge, for a girl.
“I hope I wear a big hole in ’em,” she was saying, as the rest of the
Scouts came up.
But she wasn’t half so mad at Peanut as she had pretended, evidently,
for while Art and Lou were taking all the responsibility of cooking the
lunch and making the coffee, the two of them walked off together up the
stream to the falls, Alice giving little “Ouches!” every minute or two
as her shoeless feet stepped on a root or a hard pebble, and they had
to be called back by the rest when lunch was ready.
It was certainly a merry meal. The girls made birch bark plates, and
they had paper napkins in their baskets, and plenty of doughnuts to
go with the coffee. Art used the last of the flour and condensed milk
for flapjacks, cooking busily while the rest ate, and looking very
happy when the girl in pink said, “It’s too bad. _You_ aren’t getting
anything at all.”
“He don’t mind,” said Peanut. “He’d rather cook than eat anything,
especially for girls.”
“Does he like girls?” asked Alice, who was seated on the ground,
with her feet sticking out, so she could wiggle the dangling toes of
Peanut’s socks, which made everybody laugh.
“Does he like girls! You should have heard what he said about ’em this
morning!” Peanut replied.
“Shut up--or when I get you to-night----” Art half whispered this at
Peanut.
“Oh, tell me, tell me!” cried Alice.
“I’ll whisper it,” said Peanut.
He whispered in her ear, and she burst out laughing. Her sister, in
pink, was trying hard to hear, but she couldn’t.
“No, I’ll _never_ tell _Grace_,” said Alice, wriggling her toes with
delight. “Oh, it’s a lovely story, Grace!”
Grace moved away to the other side of the circle, with a pout, and she
and Art sat together and finished their lunch.
After lunch the girls insisted on clearing the dishes. “It is a
woman’s place to do the dishes!” they said, and when the dishes were
done everybody sat down under the trees, and the Scouts, at Lou’s
suggestion, got out their knives, and carved their staffs.
First, they cut their initials, and then in Roman numerals, the
mileage for the day before. “Let’s see--nineteen miles to the top
of Moosilauke, one mile down the road and back, a mile maybe to
camp--twenty-one miles,” said Peanut, “that’s two XX’s and a I.”
When he had finished, Alice took the staff out of his hand.
“You’ve forgotten something,” she said.
“What?” asked Peanut.
“_My_ initials, silly,” she answered. “If you don’t put them on, how
will you remember me?”
“By a sore face and a wet shirt,” Peanut replied.
“Now, don’t be a goose. Put my initials on,” the girl laughed--“A. G.”
“It’s not N. G. anyhow,” said Peanut. He carefully cut her initials
beside his own, at the top of the staff, and of course Alice showed it
to her sister and the other girls, and the rest of the Scouts had to
do the same thing. By the time it was done, Mr. Green was fast asleep,
Mrs. Green was nodding, and Mr. Rogers was looking at his watch.
“I’m afraid it’s time this little midsummer day’s dream was ended,” he
smiled. “We’ve got some way to go yet.”
“Wake up Papa, then,” said Alice. “Here are your old socks. Oh, dear,
there’s no hole in ’em, either. I _tried_, though.”
She pulled off the socks, tossed them to Peanut, and went gingerly on
her bare feet to the fire, where her own shoes and stockings had quite
dried. In a moment, they were on. She did everything quickly. She
grabbed a blade of grass, then, and tickled her father’s nose. He put
up his hand and brushed his face, still sleeping. It was the laughter
and his wife’s voice crying, “Alice! Behave yourself!” which really
woke him up.
The five miles to North Woodstock were quickly made--rather too
quickly, perhaps, to please the Scouts. They were having a good time.
They stopped for a few minutes only to look at Agassiz Basin, where
Lost River makes some lovely bathing pools on the rocky ledges. The
Greens, of course, invited them into their hotel for supper, but Mr.
Rogers shook his head.
“No,” said he, “we’ve got to get along up the Notch yet, and be ready
for the climb over Liberty and Lafayette to-morrow. I’m afraid we’ve
got to be on our way.”
The girls gathered around Frank. One of them wrote an address on a
card, and gave it to him. “Now, promise,” they said, “you’ve got to
send us all one of those horrid pictures.”
“If they’re so horrid, I shouldn’t think you’d want ’em,” said Frank.
“Well, you send ’em just the same,” they answered.
Everybody shook hands all around, and Alice, as she released Peanut’s
hand, managed to slap his face lightly, and ran laughing up the steps.
The Scouts tramped away into the village, while the girls waved their
handkerchiefs from the porch.
“Yes, Art,” Peanut said, “girls _are_ a pesky nuisance. They look so
ugly in pink dresses.”
“Oh, shut up on that!” Art cried. “You’ve got a ducking coming to you
in the next brook. Anyhow, _mine_ wasn’t a face-slapping tomboy!”
“No, she was just _too_ sweet,” laughed Peanut, as he dodged Art’s
swing at his head.
At the village they stocked up on provisions--bacon, condensed milk,
tea and coffee, flour and sweet chocolate--for their provisions were
well used up, and soon they were plodding up the road, northward, and
entering the Franconia Notch.
The road was quite unlike that down which they had tramped two days
before, on the west side of Kinsman. It was macadamized and full of
motors.
“This is one of the through highways from the south to the northern
side of the mountains,” said the Scout Master. “I fear we’ve hit it at
about the worst time of day, too, because we’re only twelve miles from
the Profile House, which is the end of the day’s run for many cars.
Most of ’em seem to be going in that direction.”
“I should think they were,” said Rob. “My blanket is covered with dust
already.”
“Gosh, my _lungs_ are covered with dust,” said Peanut. “How far have we
got to go, dodging these things?”
“Only six miles,” the Scout Master answered. “I guess we can stand it
that long.”
It was getting on toward dark in the Notch (where the sun seems to set
much earlier than outside, because of the high western wall) when they
reached the Flume House.
“It’s too dark to go up into the Flume to camp to-night,” Mr. Rogers
declared. “Besides, I don’t know just where the path up Liberty starts,
and we’d better wait for daylight to ask. We’ll go up the road a few
rods, and camp by some brook close to the road. Then in the morning we
can see the Flume and the Basin and all the sights.”
The motors had ceased going by now, and the road was empty. They very
soon came to a good brook, and a few paces off the road put them into
the seclusion of the woods. Here they camped, and had their supper. The
day had been a comparatively light one--four miles down Moosilauke, six
through Lost River and to North Woodstock, and six to camp--sixteen in
all, mostly down-hill.
“And don’t forget the two miles at lunch to the store and back for our
packs,” said Frank.
“An even eighteen, then,” said Rob. “Gee, that’s not very good.”
“Women--they’re to blame for everything, ain’t they, Art?” said Peanut.
Art got up and made for his tormentor, but Peanut was too quick for
him. He was away into the rough, dark woods, and Art gave up the chase.
It wasn’t long after, however, in spite of the fact that they had
walked only eighteen miles, when the camp was asleep.