"They're terrible muddy!" spoke Rick as he got on firm ground and looked at his shoes. "Terrible!"
"Yes, but it'll wash off," consoled Chot. "Come on down to the brook, and mind you keep on the path, now! You must have got off or you wouldn't have been stuck."
"I didn't know you had to stay on the path," Rick said.
"Sure you do," declared Chot. "There's a lot of water, a regular bog, under this field. If you get off the path you'll be stuck. Now after you wash your shoes you follow Tom and me."
There was, as Chot had said, a sort of path through the field which a half-hidden brook had turned into a swamp. The path led along on top of numbers of big grass hummocks, or "footstools," as Rick called them. By jumping from one grass hummock to the other the boys could keep out of the mud.
Chot went on ahead, while Rick came next, and Tom brought up the rear guard for Rick. He safely reached the brook, and there he washed the worst of the mud off his shoes. He was thinking what his mother would say when she saw them.
"That's good enough!" declared Chot, after Rick had dabbled each foot in the brook several times. "That's good enough. The rest of the mud'll dry off when we run through the grass. Come on!"
"Yes, we don't want to stop here too long," agreed Rick. "I want to find Ruddy."
"We'll be out on the road soon," said Chot. "If that peddler and the sailor drove out of Belemere they'd have to come over on this road we're coming to. And unless they drove terrible fast we ought to be ahead of 'em."
"Junk wagons don't drive fast," declared Tom. "They stop at every house to buy papers and bottles."