"Then we will complete our circuit of it if we can. Wouldn't it be funny if we got lost?"
"Not to me, it wouldn't. I can get along without that."
The boys had got around to the opposite side of the lake when Tad cried out joyously.
"There's a blaze," pointing to a tree from which the bark had been cut.
"I see it," answered Stacy. "They think they are playing a mighty smart trick on us, don't they?"
"It looks that way."
"We're Lost!"
With light hearts the boys started on the new trail. It proved an easy one to follow, though they had begun to wonder if they ever were going to reach their destination. By the sun Butler kept the general direction in which they were traveling pretty well in mind. He did not think for a moment that he was on the wrong trail.
As a matter of fact another party had, in the meantime, followed the trail from the village, taking Cale's blazes to the point where they eventually turned off. It was this branch made by the strange party that Tad and Stacy had followed to the first lake. They were many, many miles from the camp of their fellows. What was still worse, they were now on yet another trail, a trail all of a year old. After a time that trail, too, ended abruptly. In trying to pick it up, or its continuation, the boys lost it altogether, nor did they find it again. Tad called a halt and getting from his pony sat down on a log.