“Not yet,” he muttered, compressing his lips with resolve. “I wonder whether them Boy Scouts can tell by looking at a person’s footprints whether they were made an hour or a month ago. Howsumiver, I don’t see that it makes any difference here. He must have gone this way sometime and all I have to do is to folly him till I come upon him or the place where he wint, which will sarve as well.”
Less than half an hour later, the trailer abruptly halted with another wondering exclamation. Again he had come upon a velvety bed of moss, where he looked upon the imprint, not of one pair but of two pairs of shoes. They were side by side, with one set of impressions as distinct as the other, and all looking so much alike that Mike was struck with an absurd fancy.
“It can’t be that the man has growed four legs or is creeping along with shoes on his hands as well as his faat. Each print looks more like the others than it does like itself——”
A shiver ran down his spine and he gasped. He recoiled a step, scrutinized the footprints, and then advanced and compared them with what he had first come upon.
“Begorra! it was mesilf that made ’em all!”
It was the astounding truth. He was trailing himself. Instead of moving in a straight line as he believed he had been doing from the first, he had been walking—at least during the latter part of his tramp—in a circle. You know that when a person is lost in a trackless waste he is almost sure to do this, unless he is a master of woodcraft or uses the utmost precaution against going astray.
Many explanations of this peculiar tendency have been given, but it is probably due to the fact that one side of every man and woman is more developed and stronger than the other. A right-handed man is more powerful on that side, and the reverse is the case with a left-handed person. Very few are ambidextrous. We unconsciously allow for this condition in our daily walks and movements, since we are surrounded by landmarks as may be said; but when these aids are removed, we are swayed by the muscles on one side more than by those on the other. A right-handed person unconsciously verges to the left, while the left-handed one does the opposite. The impulse being uniform, even if slight, his course naturally assumes the form of a circle.
It was hardly to be expected that Mike Murphy should reason out this explanation, for he had never before experienced anything of the kind. So far as woodcraft was concerned he could not have been more ignorant. He removed his hat, ran his fingers through his abundant red hair and laughed, for he could not close his eyes to the comical absurdity of it all.
“It’s a mighty qu’ar slip, as me cousin said whin he started to go up stairs and bumped down cellar, and be the same token Mike Murphy is lost to that extent in these Maine woods that he’ll niver find his way out till some one takes his hand and leads him like a blind beggar.
“There must be some plan to figger the thing out,” he added, as he replaced his hat. “I’ve heerd that there be many signs that do guide one when he’s off the track. Alvin once told me he had heard an old hunter say that there’s more bark on one side of a tree than the ither, but I disremember whether it was the east or west or north or south side, and I can’t strip off the bark to measure it, so that idea will do me no good. Then I’ve heerd that the tops of some of the trees dip the most toward a certain p’int of the compass, but I don’t mind me whether the same are apple trees or pear trees or some ither kind, and which is the side they nod their heads on. Ah, why did I forgit it?”