“It’s sure a wonderful coincidence that another fellow having my initials should cut them on this very same tree,” he thought. “Don’t look as though they had been cut very long, either,” he muttered, as he moved over to examine the marks closer.
Then suddenly the truth came to him. They were the marks he had cut only an hour or two before.
“And that means that I’ve been traveling round in a circle and have come back to where I started,” he muttered. “Now what do you know about that?”
He remembered then that he had heard that a person lost in the woods is very apt to walk in a circle, owing to the tendency to take a slightly longer step with the right foot than with the left.
“Right back where I started from,” he mused, as he stared at the letters. “How the dickens is a fellow going to keep a straight line? If the sun would only come out from behind those clouds I might go by it, but it doesn’t look as though it had any intention of doing it. Well, here goes for another try at it. I may be back later,” he grinned as he looked again at the log.
Starting off in the same direction that he had taken before, he picked out a tree as far away as he could see through the thick woods and made his way to it.
“I’ve come straight so far at least,” he smiled, as he leaned against the tree and with his eye picked out another for his second goal.
In this way he kept on for what seemed to him a long time. He kept looking about half expecting to find himself back where he started from a second time. But as the time passed and he saw no sign of the fallen tree he began to take heart.
“I really believe I’m going straight this time,” he told himself.
It was nearly noon and he knew that he must have gone many miles before he thought of being hungry. But now the thought came to him with striking force. He remembered that he had eaten nothing since the night before and, as he expressed it, he felt empty clear down to his toes.