"We'd better start," said Zara, nervously. "I want to get away as soon as ever I can. Don't you, Bessie?"
"Indeed I do, Zara. I'm just as afraid of having Farmer Weeks catch us as you are. If he found me he'd take me back to Maw Hoover, I know. And she'd be awfully angry with me."
"I'm all ready to start whenever you are," announced Jack. "Come on. It gets dark early in the woods, you know. They're mighty thick when you get further up the mountain. But if you walk along fast you'll get out of them long before it's really dark."
So they started off. Little Jack seemed to be a thorough woodsman and to know almost every stick and stone in the path. And presently they came to a blazed tree—a tree from which a strip of bark had been cut with a blow from an axe.
"That's my mark. I made it myself," said Jack, proudly. "Here's where we leave this trail. Be careful now. Look where I put my feet, and come this same way."
Then he struck off the trail, and into the deep woods themselves where the moss and the carpet of dead leaves deadened their footsteps. Although the sun was still high, the trees were so thick that the light that came down to them was that of twilight, and Zara shuddered.
"I'd hate to be lost in these woods," she said.
Then, abruptly, they were on another trail. Jack had been a true guide.
"You can't lose your way now," he said. "Keep to the trail and go straight ahead."
"Good-bye, Jack," said Bessie. "You're just as true and brave as any of the knights you ever read about, and if you keep on like this you'll be a great man when you grow up—as great as your father. Good-bye!"