“Well, it must be just a little farther,” he said. And they trudged on. It was growing darker and darker in the forest. A gray veil seemed to be drawing around them, hiding the way. Rose shivered.
“I wish I had worn my coat,” she said. “I think it is going to rain, Kenneth. Don’t you think we had better go home?”
“No, indeed!” cried Kenneth. “We are almost there now. Yes,—I remember that oak tree with the big rock beside it. I am sure we are there now;” and he brushed eagerly through the bushes.
But when they passed the oak tree, there was no wigwam. Rose shook her curls uneasily. “I want to go home,” she said. “It isn’t nice in the forest when there is no sunshine. The trees are full of gray smoke. I wish we had waited for a sunny day.”
“It isn’t smoke, it is fog,” said Kenneth. “I am sure that this was the place, but the wigwam is gone. Somebody must have pulled it down. Perhaps the Indians themselves came back.”
Rose looked over her shoulder anxiously. “Let’s go home,” she said.
“Well, perhaps we had better,” agreed Kenneth. He remembered that sometimes the Island fogs grew so thick that even the fishermen were afraid of losing their way.
They turned about and started towards the little thin path which they had left a few minutes earlier. But where had the path gone? They could not find it anywhere. The fog was creeping around them so that they could see scarcely ten feet ahead. Kenneth took Rose by the hand, and together they stumbled on over the moss and dead branches. But still they found no path. Every few minutes they would stop and look about, and then, fearing that they were going wrong, would start in another direction. The fog grew thicker, and they could hardly see one another. Kenneth’s cap was dewed with heavy drops, and Rose’s curls looked almost as though she had been in bathing.
She squeezed Kenneth’s hand tightly. “Are we lost, Kenneth?” she asked, in a brave voice.
“No, we aren’t lost,” he answered. “We know where we are,—right in the middle of the forest. But I can’t remember the way home. Let us shout. Perhaps some one will hear us and show us the way.”