He paused a moment to rest, and listened intently for a sound of the retreating footsteps of those ahead of him.
“Why,” he exclaimed, after a second or two. “I can’t hear them!”
There were no sounds save those made by the birds and small beasts of the forest.
“They’ve distanced me!” Fern exclaimed. “I couldn’t keep up with them! Now I’ve lost track of them! What shall I do?”
He was trembling, partly from excitement, and partly from nervousness and weakness. A mist seemed to come before his eyes. He looked about him and saw, off to the left, a little hill.
“I’ll climb that, and see if I can catch a glimpse of them,” he said, speaking aloud. The sound of his own voice seemed to bring his confidence back to him. His legs lost their trembling and he felt stronger.
Up to the summit of the hill he made his way, finding it a more toilsome climb than he had imagined. He reached the top. Below him, stretched out like a narrow ribbon of gray on a background of green, was the little trail he had been following, and which had been taken by the three men. It wound in and out among the woods, extending toward the lake, a glimpse of the shining water of which Fenn could just catch.
Something moving on the trail caught his eye. He looked intently at it, and, the next moment he exclaimed:
“There they are! They’re hurrying along as if a whole band of detectives was after them, instead of me alone. Now to see if I can’t catch up to them.”
He gave one more look at the two Celestials and the white man, who, every moment were nearing their goal, and then, hurried down the other side of the hill, to cut across through the woods at the foot, and so reach the trail.