“Miss Gordon will be worried to death if we don’t get back to the tree house soon,” Eileen declared anxiously. “Let’s hurry.”
The girls walked along the grass at the side of the road to avoid mud. By the nearly unbroken stretch of the thoroughfare, they knew that few vehicles had passed that way during the day. Automobiles usually followed the paved highway which wound through the heart of the woods.
Swinging around a curve, the girls were both startled and relieved to observe a horse and buggy tied up at the roadside.
“Why, that’s the same old-fashioned outfit we saw from the tree house!” exclaimed Veve. “I know where we are now!”
“So do I,” laughed Connie, greatly relieved. “We can’t be very far from the big oak tree and our sky house.”
The girls wondered what had become of the old lady with the sack. Evidently, she remained somewhere in the park area, for the horse and buggy had not been shifted from their original place.
“Maybe she took a wrong trail as we did,” Connie remarked. “It would be easy to do with so many markers mixed up.”
As the girls approached the old horse, Veve heard someone moving rapidly through the woods.
“Someone’s coming,” she murmured.
Even as she murmured the warning, the roadside bushes suddenly parted.