"Besides," said he, "that man told us that we were in the right way."
"Yes," said Forester, "but he did not tell us that we were going right in it."
"I suppose he did not know which way we were going," said Marco.
The question then arose, what was to be done. Forester proposed that they should get into the wagon and let Isaiah drive them to No. 3, but Marco said that he was commander, and he was not going to try to get to No. 3 any more. He had been travelling back and forth through those woods long enough, and he declared that he would not vote to go through them again, if he had to go round the world to get to the other side of them.
Forester laughed and submitted to the decision; so they all returned to Isaiah's father's.
The next morning they formed a different plan for pursuing their journey. They wanted to get to the Quebec road now, as soon as possible, and they found, by enquiry, that, by taking a boat upon a large pond or lake, a few miles distant, they could go about twenty miles by water, through a chain of ponds, which led in the direction in which they wished to go.
So Forester hired a man to go with them and bring back the boat. They went, in a wagon, to a place very near the landing, at the pond. The landing was in a small cove, surrounded by forests. The cove opened out into the pond by two points of land, rocky and precipitous, and crowned with evergreen trees. The water was smooth, and the whole scene highly picturesque. When Marco came in sight of it, he was much pleased with the prospect of a voyage on such a sheet of water.
There was considerable water in the boat when the party arrived on the beach, and Forester undertook to bail it out. The man who was going with them went and cut a bush, with a thick top, to use as a sail, in case there should be a fair wind. While he was bringing the bush, and Forester was bailing out the boat, Marco stood upon the beach, looking at the paddles.
"Does she leak, cousin Forester?" asked Marco.