There were three distinct thumps on the side of the lodge, and then all was quiet. Then a loud and insistent knocking came on the front door. The twins looked at each other with startled eyes. Then Tim took the lamp, and they started for the front door. Mac took up the poker as they passed the fireplace.
“I’ll open the door,” he said, and while Tim held the lamp he turned the key and pulled the knob. The door came open with a rush, and the wind snuffed the lamp flame out in a twinkling, and yet not so quickly that the Ford twins could make out the fact that there was no one near the front door.
CHAPTER XVI
The Quarry Shed
Barry and Kent stood in the storm-tossed woods and gazed with sinking hearts at the ledge of rock before them. It told them in unmistakable terms that they were lost and, as Barry had truly said, at a very serious time. After all of their recent pushing on, they were right back at the place where they had been a short time before.
“I wonder how we came to go around like that?” Kent asked, as he brushed snow from the front of his coat and tried to see around him.
“Easy to do in a blinding storm like this one,” Barry replied. “Well, we’re into it for fair. Shall we try it again, or turn back to Fox Point?”
“I don’t want to turn back,” Kent protested. “Mac and Tim will be badly worried, and I’d like to make it through, if we possibly can. Which way do you think we ought to go?”
“I thought we were going right, and yet we came around in a circle. Trouble is, it is getting so confounded dark. Want to try going on again?”
“Yes, and we’ll go more west than we have been going. We can’t stand here and freeze.”
They started forward once more, striking out in a new direction which seemed to both of them to be the right way. The wind was searching and they lowered their heads, both to keep their faces out of the cutting blast and to shelter their eyes from the driving snow. The sled, dragging along back of them, made slow progress through the mounting snow, and it caught frequently on the snags and bushes. From time to time they changed and took turns pulling it, but after a time Barry halted and came close to his chum, whom he could scarcely see in the gloom.