"Well, get the direction," was the answer, with a tinge of annoyance this time, "and you two had better go after him. I made sure from his last hail that he was right by the camp."
Roger waggishly nodded his head in the direction of the speaker.
"I don't envy those two men their job," he said in an undertone, and, doubling on his tracks, he came back to the trail that had been blazed. Then circling round to the right, so as to be in the opposite direction from that which his searchers had taken, he quietly made his way past the working force and came to the spot where the cook was just making preparations for dinner. Unobserved, he crept quite close to the camp, and finding a convenient spruce with widely spreading branches, he climbed up some fifteen feet, where was a natural hammock in the boughs, and lay down, taking off the boot from his swollen foot and awaited what should come.
He had not long to wait. In less than half an hour the two men returned stating that they had found some signs of ax-work in the vicinity of the last hail, but that they had called and called and received no reply. The men spoke gravely and one of them said:
"I hope the youngster has not struck a quag!"
The leader gave an impatient exclamation.
"Well," he said, "it's our own fault if we have any trouble finding him, but he has been within a hundred yards of the camp all this time that he has been making such a fuss, and how he could be such an ass as to cross our trail and get on the other side of it without noticing, gets me."
Roger chuckled.
"You'll find it harder hunting for me than I did for you," he said to himself, "and perhaps the laugh won't be all on the one side."
He settled himself more comfortably in the tree and listened to Field giving instructions to the members of the party how they should separate and circle at an appointed distance, calling every few minutes as they did so.