“Will you? All right, young Curlytop!” exclaimed the foreman. “Do you know the way?”
“Oh, yes!” answered Ted, quite confident.
If Mr. Martin had been there or in the store, which was not far from the mill, he might not have let Teddy go. But the father of the Curlytops was off in another part of the forest seeing about something connected with the business. And Ted never asked his mother if he might go. He just went.
Off he started through the woods to go to the distant place where Jake and Sam—the two men who had gotten him out of the log—were working on the chute.
At first the path through the woods was very plain, and Ted had no trouble. But after a while the trail became fainter and more than once the Curlytop boy stopped and looked about him, listening for the sound of chopping axes.
“I don’t seem to hear any,” he murmured; “but I’m sure this is the right path.”
But it was not, and the farther Ted wandered the more distant he got from the place where the men were working. Deeper he went into the forest until at last he had to stop and give up.
“I—I guess I’m lost!” murmured Ted. His heart began to beat strangely. It was a fearful feeling to be alone in the woods. And that is what had happened to poor Teddy.
CHAPTER XIV
A STRANGE CRY
Jake and Sam, who had been sent to the distant part of the woods to build the long chute, of course knew nothing of Teddy having been sent to call them back to help mend the broken machinery in the sawmill. Meanwhile the foreman and his “gang” did the best they could without the two missing ones.