He stooped and picked up some pieces of loose paper from the ground.
“These are from Darry’s notebook. Am I right, Amy?”
Amy took the pieces of paper and examined them.
“They come from Darry’s notebook, all right,” she said. “He always uses that same blue paper in his notebook.”
“Then he is marking a trail!” Jessie’s voice was feverishly eager. “This is the first clue we have had. Come on, let’s follow it.”
At Burd’s suggestion, they scattered in several directions, searching eagerly, and it was Nell who finally picked up the trail again some hundred feet further on. There were more loose sheets of the same bluish paper, and again they were identified by Amy as belonging to the notebook that Darry invariably carried with him.
The trail thus marked led sharply off from the path they had been following, diverging from it almost at a right angle. Without hesitation the girls and boys prepared to follow this clue, even though it seemed to lead them continually deeper into the heart of the woods.
For a considerable distance the trail remained fairly plain. It was evident that whoever Darry’s captors were, they had left his hands—or at least one hand—free, and in this way he had ingeniously contrived to mark out the winding path through the woods.
Then, suddenly, all clues abruptly ceased. Although they searched frantically for a long distance in all directions they found nothing that could tell them where Darry had gone from there. Once more he had disappeared utterly and completely.
“I suppose they found out what he was doing at this point,” said Burd, gloomily. “Tied his hands, probably. Poor, old Darry! Now we are up a tree!”