“Here’s a path—of a sort—that seems to lead through it, though,” observed Nell.
“Come on, then,” said Amy, with a nervous giggle. “It’ll be no worse to be swallowed up by the swamp than to be scared to death by the ghosts.”
Gingerly, they felt their way along the soft ground, expecting every moment that they might slip and find themselves mired in the oozing mud.
Finally, after half an hour of this sort of progress, they came to a place where the solid ground seemed to end. Before them and on both sides of them waved and beckoned the treacherous, too-green marsh grass. Jessie, stretching out a foot warily in search of firmer footing, drew back as the mud sucked greedily at her shoe.
“No use, I guess,” she said reluctantly. “We’ll have to go back and try some other way.”
Carefully they retraced their steps, slipping now and then and clutching at one another in wild panic. Once they thought they had lost the trail. It was only a moment before they found the firmer ground again, but the absolute terror of those few seconds was unforgettable.
Once upon familiar ground again in the shelter of the forest, they could laugh at their panic, but even then they could not think of it without a shudder.
“I don’t see why we went into the swamp, anyway,” remarked Nell, as they started slowly to circle the swamp. “Those horrid figures we saw were on the edge of the swamp, not in it.”
“Well, we might as well look around here, anyway,” replied Jessie.
“Though I don’t in the least expect to see anything but our own shadows,” added Amy, gloomily.