"Hot off the frying pan," added Tad.
"With a cup of steaming hot coffee added to it, while you were listening to the rain pattering on the roof of your tent," suggested Walter.
"All sitting tight and snug as a bug in a rug?" asked the fat boy. "No, I couldn't stand it. My heart is too weak. I should die of heart failure. And, incidentally, if you fellows keep on nagging me, something's going to happen. Mind you, I am not making any threats."
"You had better not if you know what is best for you," warned Rector.
"But I am just saying what will take place, that's all. I—" Stacy did not complete the sentence. He stumbled over a dead limb and plunged head first into a bed of mold that streaked his face with black, filling his mouth and eyes, to the great delight of the rest of the party and the discomfiture of the fat boy. Stacy kept quiet for a long time after that.
After four hours of this sort of traveling—it was now near ten o'clock at night—Tad halted, and, raising his torch above his head, gazed about him, trying to light up the shadows up in the trees. The Pony Rider Boy was trying to get his bearings. Cale was observing him with twinkling eyes.
A twig snapped off to the right of them and a horse whinnied.
"Here we are," cried Butler. "That was Silver Face calling to me."
"I was expecting to see you go on past the place," chuckled Vaughn. "Well done, my lad! Had you lived all your life in the woods you could not have made a better campfall."
"What, are we home?" cried Walter.